Psycho-Analysis and the War NeurosesFreud, Sigmund
History
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis; War neuroses
A soldier who has once been paralysed for a time through the emotion of
terror in his conscious ego is in many ways no longer in the position
to satisfy consciously the repression which the pressure of discipline
demands. It is almost always the anger towards his superiors which
brings on further convulsive attacks. During hypnosis, which lifts
the curtain of this originally hallucinated dream-action during the
attack, we see again and again the patient struggling with his highest
superiors. He strikes, bites, stabs and shoots them, treads them under
foot with terrible oaths. He here lets free the fiercest instincts
against persons who restrained his conscious ego.
It is quite explicable why these kinds of attacks before they come for
treatment are often associated with mutism. The patient denies himself
in a certain degree the faculty of speech, because he is afraid of
speaking certain words that might bring misfortune upon him.
In one case I succeeded even without hypnosis in directly making use
of the convulsive attacks of the patient for treatment. I was able to
become _en rapport_ with the patient in the attack so that he informed
me about the events which he actually hallucinated during the single
convulsive attack.
The sphere of the purely psychic war injuries without any physical
signs which can be treated in this way is also great. I mentioned
above a case of stupor. It is quite comprehensible that it is more
particularly the mental inhibitory phenomena which are accessible to
this treatment, because the cessation of mental processes is brought
about through an accumulation of affect which entirely owes its origin
to definite war occurrences. The psycho-catharsis as a foundation for a
further analytic treatment here works wonders.
I will take this opportunity of mentioning that as regards the war
neurotic an abreaction by means of words is mostly not sufficient in
this compressed form of treatment. The soldier is under the suggestion
of the deed “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. His overburdened
subconscious now is freed by means of an acted abreaction. On account
of this I have for a long time proceeded to construct an upholstered
dummy against which the neurotic fighting in his primitive human
instinct victoriously frees himself.
The neuroses of anxiety and terror, so far as they have become manifest
through war experiences, can be treated successfully. Nevertheless, it
is to be noted that also in the feeling of guilt of the war neurotic
not only are real, specific and complex conditioned war atrocities
the inner kernel, but that things experienced only in phantasy may be
important.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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