In Paris he acquired a point of view which was bound to bring him into conflict with the materialistic pundits of Vienna. Hypnotism was itself looked upon as an artifice of charlatans. Wagner-Jauregg reflected the ruling tradition when, only a few years ago, he said, “The trouble with hypnotism is that you never know who is pulling the other fellow’s leg.” Freud was met by derisive laughter when he announced at the Medical Society of Vienna that male hysterics were to be found in Paris. For hysteria, as one of the pedants reminded him, was philologically derived from “hysteron,” meaning uterus, and therefore couldn’t possibly occur in males. This was an echo of the days when hysteria was supposed to be due to a migratory uterus and women were turned upside down to bring it back in place. In 1881 and 1882 Breuer had treated a girl suffering from hysteria, and his interest was renewed in the case in conversation with Freud. Breuer remembered that when he treated the patient under hypnosis, she recalled the first episode in which a symptom had appeared, related it with every evidence of excitement, and discovered on waking that the symptom had disappeared. Breuer and Freud began to study hysteria from this point of view and published their results. Charcot had demonstrated that ideas could cause hysteria; Breuer had found that the discovery of pathogenic ideas could cure hysteria. In 1889 Freud returned to France, this time to the other center of hypnotic research, Nancy, where Liébeault and Bernheim were doing remarkable things. Freud here saw something the full significance of which did not at once dawn upon him. A subject was hypnotized and given a “post-hypnotic suggestion” to raise an umbrella at a certain signal after coming out of hypnosis. The subject was then awakened from hypnosis, and presently, when the stipulated signal was given, obediently raised the umbrella, although still inside the room. When asked why he raised the umbrella, _he said that he wanted to see whether it was his or not_. Thus did he rationalize (a concept later developed) the gratification of an impulse _which he did not himself at first recognize_. When challenged to explain himself, he merely produced a plausible interpretation of his own conduct. The immense significance of this train of events is great enough. It at once raises the searching question: To what extent are we in ignorance of our own motives and accustomed to improvise merely plausible explanations of and to ourselves? But an even more notable phenomenon occurred. _If the subject was asked again and again to try to remember why he raised the umbrella, he sooner or later recalled (to his own surprise) that he had been commanded to do it._