Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
Those ideas which originate in the deepest layer, and from the nucleus
of the pathogenic organization, are only with the greatest difficulty
recognized by the patient as reminiscences. Even after everything is
accomplished, when the patients are overcome by the logical force and
are convinced of the curative effect accompanying the emerging of this
idea—I say even if the patients themselves assume that they have thought
“so” and “so” they often add, “but to recall, that I have thought so, I
cannot.” One readily comes to an understanding with them by saying that
these were unconscious thoughts. But how should we note this state of
affairs in our own psychological views? Should we pay no heed to the
patient’s demurring recognition which has no motive after the work has
been completed; should we assume that it was really a question of
thoughts which never occurred, and for which there is only a possibility
of existence so that the therapy would consist in the consummation of a
psychic act which at that time never took place? It is obviously
impossible to state anything about it, that is, to state anything
concerning the condition of the pathogenic material previous to the
analysis, before one has thoroughly explained his psychological views
especially concerning the essence of consciousness. It is a fact worthy
of reflection that in such analyses one can follow a stream of thought
from the conscious into the unconscious (that is, absolutely not
recognized as a reminiscence) thence draw it for some distance through
the consciousness, and again see it end in the unconscious; and still
this variation of the psychic elucidation would change nothing in it, in
its logicalness, and in a single part of its connection. Should I then
have this stream of thought freely before me, I could not conjecture
what part was, and what part was not recognized by the patient as a
reminiscence. In a measure I see only the points of the stream of
thought merging into the unconscious, just the reverse of that which has
been claimed for our normal psychic processes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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