Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
I did not find it easy to determine the diagnosis, but for two reasons I
concluded to agree with my colleague. First, because it was rather
peculiar that such a highly intelligent patient should not be able to
give anything definite about the character of her pains. A patient
suffering from an organic pain, if it is not accompanied by any
nervousness will be able to describe it definitely and calmly; it may
perhaps be lancinating, appearing at certain intervals, extending from
this to that location, and in his opinion it may be evoked by this or
that influence. The neurasthenic describing his pain gives the
impression of being occupied with some difficult mental problem reaching
far beyond his powers. His features are tense and distorted as though
under the domination of a painful affect, his voice becomes shriller, he
struggles for expression, he rejects all designations that the physician
makes for his pains, even though they are undoubtedly afterwards found
as appropriate. He is ostensibly of the opinion that language is too
poor to give expression to his feelings. His sensations are something
unique, they never existed before so that they can not be exhaustively
described. He never tires of constantly adding new details and when he
has to stop he is surely controlled by the impression that he was
unsuccessful in making himself understood to the physician. All this is
due to the fact that his pains absorb his whole attention. In the case
of Miss v. R. we had just the opposite behavior and we had to conclude
from this that she attributed sufficient significance to the pain, but
that her attention was concentrated on something else of which the pains
were the accompanying phenomena, perhaps on thoughts and sensations
which were connected with the pain.
A still greater determination for the conception of the pain must
however, be found in a second moment. If we irritate a painful area in a
patient suffering from an organic disease or neurasthenia his
physiognomy will show a definite expression of discomfort or of physical
pain. Furthermore, the patient winces, refuses to be examined and
assumes a defensive attitude. With Miss v. R. when the hyperalgesic skin
or muscles of her legs were pinched or pressed her face assumed a
peculiar expression approaching nearer pleasure than pain, she cried out
and—I had to think of a pleasurable tickling—her face reddened, she
threw her head backward, closed her eyes, and her body bent backward;
all this was not very distinct but sufficiently marked so that it could
only agree with the conception that her affliction was a hysteria and
that the irritation touched a hysterogenic zone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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