Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The multiplicity of etiological moments in other cases is not
accidental, one of them has brought the other into activity. Thus a
woman, with whom her husband practices coitus reservatus without regard
to her gratification, finds herself forced to finish the tormenting
excitement following such an act with masturbation, as a result of which
she shows an anxiety neurosis with symptoms of neurasthenia. Under the
same noxiousness another woman has to contend with lewd pictures against
which she wishes to defend herself, and in this way the coitus
interruptus will cause her to acquire obsessions along with the anxiety
neurosis. Finally a third woman, as a result of coitus interruptus loses
her affection for her husband and forms another which she secretly
guards, and as a result she evinces a mixture of hysteria and anxiety
neurosis.
In a third category of mixed neuroses the connection of the symptoms is
of a still more intimate nature, as the same etiological determinants
regularly and simultaneously evoke both neuroses. Thus, for example, the
sudden sexual explanation which we have found in virginal fear always
produces hysteria, too; most causes of intentional abstinence connect
themselves in the beginning with actual obsessions; and it seems to me
that the coitus interruptus of men can never provoke a pure anxiety
neurosis, but always a mixture of the same with neurasthenia, etc.
It follows from this discussion that the etiological determinants of the
occurrence must moreover be distinguished from the specific etiological
moments of neurasthenia. The first moments, as for example the coitus
interruptus, masturbation, and abstinence, are still ambiguous, and can
each produce different neuroses; and it is only the etiological moments
abstracted from them, like the inadequate unburdening, psychic
insufficiency, and defense with substitution, that have an unambiguous
and specific relation to the etiology of the individual great neuroses.
In its intrinsic property, anxiety neurosis shows the most interesting
agreements and differences when compared with the other great neuroses,
particularly when compared with neurasthenia and hysteria. With
neurasthenia it shares one main character, namely, that the source of
excitement, the cause of the disturbance, lies in the somatic rather
than in the psychic sphere as in the case of hysteria and compulsion
neurosis. For the rest we can recognize a kind of contrast between the
symptoms of neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis, which can be expressed in
the catchwords, accumulation and impoverishment of excitement. This
contrast does not hinder the two neuroses from combining with each
other, but shows itself in the fact that the most extreme forms in both
cases are also the purest.
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