Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
5. Very frequently the nocturnal frights (pavor nocturnus of adults)
usually combined with anxiety, dyspnoea, perspiration, etc., is nothing
other than a variety of the attack of anxiety. This disturbance
determines a second form of insomnia in the sphere of the anxiety
neurosis. Moreover I became convinced that even the pavor nocturnus of
children evinces a form belonging to the anxiety neurosis. The
hysterical tinge and the connection of the fear with the reproduction of
appropriate experience or dream, makes the pavor nocturnus of children
appear as something peculiar, but it also occurs alone without a dream
or a recurring hallucination.
6. “_Vertigo._”—This in its lightest forms is better designated as
“dizziness,” assumes a prominent place in the group of symptoms of
anxiety neurosis. In its severer forms the “attack of vertigo,” with or
without fear, belongs to the gravest symptoms of the neurosis. The
vertigo of the anxiety neurosis is neither a rotatory dizziness nor is
it confined to certain planes or lines like Menier’s vertigo. It belongs
to the locomotor or coordinating vertigo, like the vertigo in paralysis
of the ocular muscles; it consists in a specific feeling of discomfort
which is accompanied by sensations of a heaving ground, sinking legs, of
the impossibility to continue in an upright position, and at the same
time there is a feeling that the legs are as heavy as lead, they shake,
or give way. This vertigo never leads to falling. On the other hand, I
would like to state that such an attack of vertigo may also be
substituted by a profound attack of syncope. Other fainting-like states
in the anxiety neurosis seem to depend on a cardiac collapse.
The vertigo attack is frequently accompanied by the worst kind of
anxiety and is often combined with cardiac and respiratory disturbances.
Vertigo of elevations, mountains and precipices, can also be frequently
observed in anxiety neurosis; moreover, I do not know whether we are
still justified in recognizing a vertigo “a stomacho laeso.”
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