Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
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Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
I refrain from giving examples for this axiom. Experience has taught me
that short analyses compressed into the form of an abstract can never
make the demonstrable impression for which they were intended. The
communication of fully analyzed cases must be reserved for another
place.
I therefore content myself in formulating the axiom and in elucidating
its significance:
9. An hysterical symptom is the expression, on the one hand, of a
masculine, and on the other hand of a feminine unconscious sexual fancy.
I expressly observe that I am unable to adjudge to this axiom the
similar general validity that I claimed for the other formulæ. As far as
I can see it is met neither in all symptoms of a single case, nor in all
cases. On the contrary it is not difficult to find cases in which the
contrary sexual emotions have found separate symptomatic expression, so
that the symptoms of hetero- and homosexuality can be as sharply
distinguished from each other as the fancies hidden behind them.
Nevertheless, the relation claimed in the ninth formula occurs
frequently enough, and wherever it is found it is of sufficient
significance to merit a special formulation. It seems to me to signify
the highest stage of complexity to which the determination of hysterical
symptoms can reach, and can only be expected in a long standing neurosis
and where a great amount of organization has occurred.[63]
The demonstrable bisexual significance of hysterical symptoms occurring
in many cases is indeed an interesting proof for the assertion
formulated by me that the supposed bisexual predisposition of man can be
especially recognized in psychoneurotics by means of psychoanalysis.[64]
Quite an analogous process from the same sphere is that in which the
masturbator in his conscious fancies attempts to live through in his
imagination the fancied situations of both the man and the woman. Other
counterparts are found in certain hysterical crises in which the
patients play both rôles lying at the basis of sexual fancies; thus, for
example, one of the cases under my observation presses his garments to
his body with one arm (as woman), and with the other arm he attempts to
tear them off (as man). This contradictory simultaneity determines most
of the incomprehensibility of the situation otherwise so plastically
represented in the attack, and is excellently suited for the concealment
of the effective unconscious fancy.
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