Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The grouping of similar reminiscences in a multiplicity of linear
stratifications, as represented in a bundle of documents, in a package,
etc., I have designated as the formation of a theme. These themes now
show a second form of arrangement. I cannot express it differently than
by saying that they are concentrically stratified around the pathogenic
nucleus. It is not difficult to say what determines these strata, and
according to what decreasing or increasing magnitude this arrangement
follows. They are layers of equal resistance tending towards the
nucleus, accompanied by zones of similar alteration of consciousness
into which the individual themes extend. The most peripheral layers
contain those reminiscences (or fascicles) of the different themes which
can readily be recalled and were always perfectly conscious. The deeper
one penetrates the more difficult it becomes to recognize the emerging
reminiscences until one strikes those near the nucleus which the patient
disavows, even at the reproduction.
As we shall hear later it is the peculiarity of the concentric
stratification of the pathogenic psychic material which gives to the
course of such an analysis its characteristic features. We must now
mention the third and most essential arrangement concerning which a
general statement can hardly be made. It is the arrangement according to
the content of thought, the connection through the logical thread
reaching to the nucleus which might in each case correspond to a
special, irregular, and manifoldly devious road. This arrangement has a
dynamic character in contradistinction to both morphological
stratifications mentioned before. Whereas, in a spacially formed scheme
the latter would be represented by rigid, arched, and straight lines,
the course of the logical concatenation would have to be followed with a
wand, over the most tortuous route, from the superficial into the deep
layers and back, generally, however, progressing from the peripheral to
the central nucleus, and touching thereby all stations; that is, its
movement is similar to the zigzag movement of the knight in the solution
of a chess problem.
I will still adhere for a moment to the last comparison in order to call
attention to a point in which it does not do justice to the qualities of
the thing compared. The logical connection corresponds not only to a
zigzag-like devious line, but rather to a ramifying and especially to a
converging system of lines. It has a junction in which two or more
threads meet only to proceed thence united, and, as a rule, many threads
running independently, or here and there connected by by-paths, open
into the nucleus. To put it in different words, it is very remarkable
how frequently a symptom is manifoldly determined, that is,
over-determined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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