Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
To be sure, we have room here for all kinds of observations. I must
assert that I was unsuccessful in demonstrating from her memory that the
conversion took place in the moment of her returning home. I therefore
investigated for similar experiences which might have occurred while she
was nursing her father, and I evoked a number of scenes, among which was
one during which she had to jump out of bed with bare feet in a cold
room to respond to the repeated calls of her father. I was inclined to
attribute to this moment a certain significance, for in addition to
complaining of pain in her legs she also complained of tormenting
sensations of coldness. Nevertheless, here, too I could not with
certainty lay hold of the scene which could be indicated as the scene of
conversion. This led me to admit that there was here some gap, when I
recalled the fact that the hysterical pains in the legs were really not
present at the time she nursed her father. From her memory she recalled
only a single attack of pain lasting a few days to which at that time
she paid no attention. I then directed my attention to the first
appearance of the pains. In this respect I was successful in awakening a
perfect memory. They came on just at the time of a relative’s visit whom
she could not receive because she was ill in bed, and who had the
misfortune to find her ill in bed on another occasion two years later.
But the search for the psychic motive of these first pains failed as
often as repeated. I believed that I could assume that these first pains
were due to a slight rheumatic attack and really had no psychic basis,
and I also discovered that this organic trouble was the model for the
later hysterical imitation, at all events that it occurred before the
scene of being accompanied home. That these mild organic pains could
continue for some time without her paying much attention to them is
quite possible when we consider the nature of the disease. The obscurity
resulting from this, namely, that the analysis pointed to a conversion
of psychic excitement into bodily pain at a time when such pain was
certainly not perceived and not recalled—this problem I hope to be able
to solve in later considerations and by other examples.[18]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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