The full import of this observation did not instantly dawn on Freud. But he continued to have difficulties with the patients whom he sought to hypnotize. They sometimes held out against his suggestions, even though they had accepted them many times before, and seriously impeded the progress of the search for the traumatic episode. He gradually abandoned hypnosis, leaving the patient in a waking state in a relaxed position with instructions to report every incident connected with the early appearance of the symptom under investigation. Vestiges of the hypnotic technique remained as late as 1895, when he would still lay his hand on the patient’s forehead as a stimulus to recollection. This method also encountered crippling difficulties. A patient would sometimes lie for hours without saying a word, totally unable to recover a relevant reminiscence. To meet this obstacle, Freud presently hit upon the simple expedient upon which he thenceforth relied. He instructed the patient to say anything and everything that popped in his head, regardless of its propriety, logic, or triviality. Freud found that all ramblings of his patient could furnish him with clues to the underlying and unavowed impulses of the sufferer. He became able to guess the nature of the buried episode in which the impulse had received its present type of manifestation. Thus the patient might begin by saying that she had seen a red-headed man in the street and that she always despised red-headed men--except of course her dear brother. Day after day apparently random allusions would build out the picture of her great interest in anything reminiscent of her brother’s looks and acts, all of which would be bitterly condemned. But if she were asked directly, she would maintain that her brother was a fine, upstanding man, and a credit to the family. The analyst, after listening to the eddies of talk, and noting the patterns along which they seemed to whirl, would presently locate a hidden rock beneath the innocent surface of the stream--in this case, an unacknowledged load of hatred against her brother. Bit by bit, stories of real or fancied childhood tyranny would come floating along the stream. Then suddenly, amid tears and violent gestures, might come the story of a long-forgotten incident which involved an intimate aggression on the part of the brother. The patient, manifestly relieved, might speedily recover from her hysterical disabilities and return to the active responsibilities of life.