Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The unconscious fancies are then the nearest psychical first steps of a
whole series of hysterical symptoms. The hysterical symptoms are nothing
other than unconscious fancies brought to light by “conversion,” and
insofar as they are somatic symptoms they are frequently enough taken
from the spheres of the sexual feelings and motor innervations which
originally accompanied the former still conscious fancies. In this way
the disuse of onanism is really made retrograde, and the final aim of
the whole pathological process, the restoration of the primary sexual
gratification, though it never becomes perfect, in a manner always
achieves a certain approximation.
The interest of him who studies hysteria turns directly from the
symptoms to the fancies from which the former originate. The technique
of psychoanalysis gives the means of finding out from the symptoms the
unconscious fancies, and then of bringing them back to the patient’s
consciousness. In this way it was found that the unconscious fancies of
hysterics perfectly correspond in content to the consciously performed
gratification situations of perverts. Those who lack examples of such
nature need only recall the historical managements of the Roman Caesars
whose frenzies were naturally only conditioned by the unrestricted
fullness of the fancy creators. The delusional formations of paranoiacs
are of the same nature, they are fancies which directly become
conscious, and which are borne by the masochistic-sadistic components of
the sexual impulse. Complete counterparts of these can also be found in
certain unconscious fancies of hysterics. It is a familiar, practically
significant fact that hysterics express their fancies not as symptoms
but in conscious realization, and in this way they feign and commit
murders, assaults, and sexual aggressions.
All that can be found out about the sexuality of the psychoneurotic can
be ascertained by the psychoanalytic examination which leads from the
obtrusive symptoms to the hidden unconscious fancies; herein, too, is
the fact, the communication of which will be put in the foreground of
this short preliminary publication.
Probably in view of the difficulties which prevent the effort of the
unconscious fancies from expressing themselves, the relation between the
fancies to the symptoms is not simple but rather manifoldly
complicated.[62] As a rule, that is, in a fully developed and a long
standing neurosis, a symptom does not correspond to an individual
unconscious fancy, but to a number of such, and indeed it is not
arbitrary but in lawful combination. To be sure in the beginning of the
disease all these complications are not developed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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