" The fact that anticathexis has an opposite direction in hysteria and the phobias from what it has in obsessional neurosis—though the distinction is not an absolute one—seems to be significant. It suggests that there is an intimate connection between repression and external anticathexis on the one hand and between regression and internal anticathexis (i.e. alteration of the ego through reaction-formation) on the other. "

― Sigmund Freud , Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety