Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
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Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
It often happened that only after the third pressure did
she make a statement then added “Why I could have told you that the
first time”—“Indeed why did you not say it”—“I thought that it was not
correct:” or “I thought that I could avoid it, but it recurred each
time.” During this difficult work I began to attach a profounder
significance to the resistance which the patient showed in the
reproduction of her recollections, and I carefully compared those
occasions in which it was especially striking.
I now come to the description of the third period of our treatment. The
patient felt better, she was psychically unburdened and more capable,
but the pains were manifestly not removed, reappearing from time to time
with the old severity. The imperfect cure went hand in hand with the
imperfect analysis, as yet I did not know in what moment and through
what mechanisms the pains originated. During the reproduction of the
most manifold scenes of the second period and the observation of the
patient’s resistance towards the reproduction, I formed a definite
suspicion which I did not then dare to use as a basis for my action. An
accidental observation turned the issue. While working with the patient
one day I heard the steps of a man in the adjacent room and a rather
pleasant voice asking some questions. My patient immediately arose
requesting me to discontinue the treatment for the day because she heard
her brother-in-law who just arrived asking for her. Before this
disturbance she was free from pains, but thereafter she betrayed by her
mien and gait the sudden appearance of violent pains. This strengthened
my suspicion and I decided to elicit the decisive explanation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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