Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
In a most surprising manner it also explains her peculiar behavior in
making appointments with her brother and then refusing to tell him
anything. Her explanation was that she thought that if she only looked
at him he must understand her suffering, as he knew the cause of it. As
this brother was really the only person who could know anything about
the etiology of her disease it followed that she acted from a motive
which, though she did not consciously understand, seemed perfectly
justified as soon as a new sense was put on it from the unconscious.
I then succeeded in causing her to reproduce different scenes the
culminating points of which were the sexual relations with her brother
at least from her sixth to her tenth year. During this work of
reproduction the organic sensation in the lap “joined in the
discussion,” precisely as regularly observed in the analysis of memory
remnants of hysterical patients. The picture of a naked female lap (but
now reduced to childish proportions and without hair) immediately
appeared or stayed away in accordance with the occurrence of the scene
in question in full light or in darkness. The disgust for eating, too,
was explained by a repulsive detail of these actions. After we had gone
through this series, the hallucinatory sensations and pictures
disappeared without having thus far returned.[52]
I have thus learned that these hallucinations were nothing other than
fragments from the content of the repressed experiences of childhood,
that is, symptoms of the return of the repressed material.
I now turned to the analysis of the voices. Here it must before all be
explained why such indifferent remarks as, “Here goes Mrs. P.—She now
looks for apartments, etc.” could be so painfully perceived, and how
these harmless sentences managed to become distinguished by
hallucinatory enforcement. To begin with, it was clear that these
“voices” could not be hallucinatory reproduced reminiscences like the
pictures and sensations, but rather thoughts which “became loud.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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