Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
This time I did not know whence this subjective sensation of smell
originated, nor on what important occasion it was objective. On being
questioned she said, “They constantly smoke at home, I really don’t know
whether the smell which I feel has any particular significance.” I then
proposed that she should try to recall things under the pressure of my
hands. I have already mentioned that her recollections were plastically
vivid, that she was a “visual.” Indeed under the pressure of my hands a
picture came into her mind—at first only slowly and fragmentarily. It
was the dining room of the house in which she waited with the children
for the arrival of the gentlemen from the factory for dinner.—“Now we
are all at the table, the gentlemen, the French maid, the housekeeper,
the children and I. It is the same as usual.”—“Just keep on looking at
that picture. It will soon become developed and specialized.”—“Yes,
there is a guest, the chief accountant, an old gentleman who loves the
children like his own grandchildren, but he dines with us so frequently
that it is nothing unusual.”—“Just have patience, keep on looking at the
picture, something will certainly happen.”—“Nothing happens. We leave
the table, the children take leave and go with us up to the second floor
as usual.”—“Well?”—“It really is something unusual, I now recognize the
scene. As the children take leave the chief accountant attempts to kiss
them, but my master jumps up and shouts at him, ‘Don’t kiss the
children!’ I then experienced a stitch in the heart, and as the
gentlemen were smoking, this odor remained in my memory.”
This, therefore, was the second, deeper seated scene causing the trauma
and leaving the memory symbol. But why was this scene so effective? I
then asked her which scene happened first, this one or the one with the
burned pastry?—“The last scene happened first by almost two
months.”—“Why did you feel the stitch at the father’s interference? The
reproof was not meant for you.”—“It was really not right to rebuke an
old gentleman in such manner who was a dear friend and a guest, it could
have been said quietly.”—“Then you were really affected by your master’s
impetuosity? Were you perhaps ashamed of him, or have you thought, ‘If
he could become so impetuous to an old friend guest over such a trifle,
how would he act towards me if I were his wife?’”—“No, that is not
it.”—“But still it was about his impetuosity?”—“Yes, about the kissing
of the children, he never liked that.” Under the pressure of my hands
there emerged a still older scene which was the real effective trauma
and which bestowed on the scene with the chief accountant the traumatic
effectivity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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