Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
Mrs. P. thirty-two years old, married three years. She is the mother of
a two-year-old child, and does not descend from nervous parents; but her
sister and brother whom I know, are also neurotic. It was doubtful
whether she was not transitorily depressed and mistaken in her judgment
in the middle of her twentieth year. During the last years she was
healthy and capacitated until she evinced the first symptoms of the
present illness, six months after the birth of her child. She became
secluded and suspicious, showing a disinclination towards social
relations with the relatives of her husband, and complained that the
neighbors in the little town now behaved towards her in a rather
impolite and regardless manner. Gradually these complaints grew in
intensity, she thought that there was something against her, though she
had no notion what it could be. But there was no doubt that all the
relatives and friends denied her respect, and did everything to
aggravate her. She was trying very hard to find out whence this came but
could not discover anything. Some time later she complained that she was
watched, that her thoughts were guessed, and that everything that
happened in her house was known. One afternoon she suddenly conceived
the thought that she was watched during the evening while undressing.
Since then she applied while undressing the most complicated
precautionary measures. She slipped into her bed in the darkness and
undressed only under cover. As she avoided all social relations, and
took but little nourishment, and was very depressed, she was sent in the
summer of 1895 to a hydrotherapeutic institute. There new symptoms
appeared and reinforced those already existing. As early as the spring,
while she was alone with the servant girl, she suddenly perceived a
sensation in her lap, and thought that the servant girl then had an
unseemly thought. This sensation became more frequent in the summer, it
was almost continuous, and she felt her genitals “as if one feels a
heavy hand.” She then began to see pictures which frightened her; they
were hallucinations of female nakedness, especially an exposed woman’s
lap with hair; occasionally she also saw male genitals. The picture of
the hairy lap and the organic sensation in the lap usually came
conjointly. The pictures became very aggravating, as she regularly
perceived them when she was in the company of a woman, and the thought
accompanying them was that she sees the woman in an indecent exposure,
and that in the same moment the woman sees the same picture of her (!)
Simultaneously with these visual hallucinations, which, after their
first appearance in the asylum, disappeared again for many months, she
began to be troubled with voices which she did not recognize and could
not explain. When she was in the street she heard, “This is Mrs. P.—Here
she goes.—Where does she go?”. Every one of her movements and actions
were commented upon. Occasionally she heard threats and reproaches. All
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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