Psycho-Analysis and the War NeurosesFreud, Sigmund
History
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis; War neuroses
I can best illustrate what I have said by a few examples. For instance,
the simplest cases, which occurred so often, of a flaccid paralysis of
the arm after a slight gunshot wound that had been well healed for a
long time and which seemed to be of a purely physical nature, showed
its unconscious connections very quickly in one sitting. Consciousness
only knows, “I cannot move my arm”, and no amount of reasoning was of
any avail. However, the unconscious spoke during hypnosis: “In the
excitement of the attack my mind became a blank. When I was hit the
impact of the shrapnel was so great that my arm felt as though it was
pulled violently backwards, and I immediately thought it was torn off”.
The correction of the unconscious idea in hypnosis which again united
the idea of the torn off arm with consciousness here quickly settled
the question of an organic basis of the symptom, It can be easily
understood that an arm which is no longer recognised as existing is
also completely analgesic.
The neurotic symptoms which owe their origin to such suddenly occurring
events we can consequently regard in their effects as realised
post-hypnotic auto-suggestions. I have confirmed this view by numerous
examples, I might mention the case of a soldier who suffered from a
severe facial tic by which he was constantly making a grimace, and who
at the same time had a contracture of the right knee joint, both of
which symptoms had proved quite refractory to the usual treatment by
suggestion. Hypnosis, which restored the conscious situation of the
initial blowing up, very soon yielded the following information. While
the patient lay unconscious under a wreckage of stones and while scenes
of his native place appeared to him as in a dream, he was constantly
compelled to make grimaces in order to remove the mass of sand which
lay on his face and also for the purpose of breathing freely. At
the same time a sharp stone was pressing on his right heel which
compelled him to keep his leg bent. This compulsion which was united
with unconscious ideas acted therefore as a post-hypnotic suggestion
for more than a year afterwards, until at last the command which
the unconscious had imposed on the patient could be annulled during
hypnosis by means of my correction. In this way was the removal of
these symptoms brought about. I could quote further similar examples in
which these kinds of contractures represent a compulsory holding of a
part in a position of ease which is based on unconscious sensations of
pain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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