Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The voices therefore owed their origin to the repression of thoughts
which in the last analysis really signified reproaches on the occasion
of an experience analogous to the infantile trauma; they were
accordingly symptoms of the return of the repression, but at the same
time they were results of a comparison between the resistance of the ego
and the force of the returning repression which in this case produce a
distortion beyond recognition. On other occasions when analyzing voices
in Mrs. P. the distortion was less marked, still the words heard always
showed a character of diplomatic uncertainty. The annoying allusion was
generally deeply hidden, the connection of the individual sentences was
masked by a strange expression, unusual forms of speech, etc.,
characteristics generally common to the auditory hallucinations of
paranoiacs, and in which I noticed the remnant of the compromise
distortion. The expression, “There goes Mrs. P., she is looking for
apartments in the street,” signified, for example, the threat that she
will never recover, for I promised her that after the treatment she
would be able to return to the little city where her husband was
employed. She rented temporary quarters in Vienna for a few months.
On some occasions Mrs. P. also perceived more distinct threats, for
example, concerning the relatives of her husband, the restrained
expression of which still continued to contrast with the grief which
such voices caused her. Considering all that we otherwise know of
paranoiacs I am inclined to assume a gradual relaxation of that
resistance which weakens the reproaches so that finally the defense
fails completely and the original reproach, the insulting word, which
one wanted to save himself returns in unchanged form. I do not, however,
know whether this is a constant course, whether the censor of the
expressions of reproach can not from the beginning stay away, or persist
to the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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