Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
For the sake of general interest I pass over the connection of this
communication and insert a series of formulæ which strive to
progressively exhaust the nature of hysteria. They do not contradict one
another but correspond partly to more complete and sharper conceptions,
and partly to the use of different points of view.
1. The hysterical symptom is the memory symbol of certain efficacious
(traumatic) impressions and experiences.
2. The hysterical symptom is the compensation by conversion for the
associative return of the traumatic experience.
3. The hysterical symptom—like all other psychic formations—is the
expression of a wish realization.
4. The hysterical symptom is the realization of an unconscious fancy
serving as a wish fulfilment.
5. The hysterical symptom serves as a sexual gratification, and
represents a part of the sexual life of the individual (corresponding to
one of the components of his sexual impulse).
6. The hysterical symptom, in a fashion, corresponds to the return of
the sexual gratification which was real in infantile life but had been
repressed since then.
7. The hysterical symptom results as a compromise between two opposing
affects or impulse incitements, one of which strives to bring to
realization a partial impulse, or a component of the sexual
constitution, while the other strives to suppress the same.
8. The hysterical symptom may undertake the representation of diverse
unconscious non-sexual incitements, but can not lack the sexual
significance.
It is the seventh among these determinations which expresses most
exhaustively the essence of the hysterical symptom as a realization of
an unconscious fancy, and it is the eighth which properly designates the
significance of the sexual moment. Some of the preceding formulæ are
contained as first steps in this formula.
In view of these relations between symptoms and fancies one can readily
reach from the psychoanalysis of the symptoms to the knowledge of the
components of the sexual impulse controlling the individual, just as I
have shown in the “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.” But in
some cases this examination gives rather unexpected results. It shows
that many symptoms can not be solved by one unconscious sexual fancy or
by a series of fancies in which the most significant and most primitive
is of a sexual nature, but in order to solve the symptom two sexual
fancies are required, one of the masculine and one of the feminine
character, so that one of these fancies arises from a homosexual
impulse. The axiom pronounced in formula seven is in no way effected by
this novelty, so that a hysterical symptom necessarily corresponds to a
compromise between a libidinous and a repressed emotion, but besides
that, it can correspond to a union of two libidinous fancies of contrary
sex characters.
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