Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
I still have something more to report about the further course of Miss
Elisabeth v. R.’s disease. A few weeks after our parting I received a
despairing letter from her mother informing me that at the first attempt
to draw Elisabeth into a conversation about her love affairs she became
very excited and refused to talk, and since then had suffered from
violent pains. She was very indignant at my having betrayed her
confidence and was perfectly inaccessible so that the treatment seemed a
complete failure. She wished to know what was to be done, for of me she
would hear nothing. I made no reply. It was to be expected that after
she was relieved from my discipline she would make another attempt to
reject her mother’s interference and return to her inaccessibility. I
was, however, quite certain that everything would adjust itself and that
my efforts had not been in vain. Two months later they returned to
Vienna and the colleague to whom I was grateful for the case informed me
that Elisabeth was perfectly well, and that her behavior was normal
although occasionally she had slight pains. Since then she has
repeatedly sent me similar messages, each time promising to visit me,
which she has never done. This is quite characteristic of the personal
relationship formed during such treatment. My colleague then assured me
that she could be considered cured. The relation of the brother-in-law
to the family underwent no change.
In the spring of 1894 I was informed that she would be present at a
private ball to which I could gain access. I did not let the opportunity
escape me and saw my former patient gliding along in a rapid dance.
Since then, following her own inclination, she has married a stranger.
EPICRISIS.
I was not always a psychotherapist but like other neuropathologists I
was educated to the use of focal diagnosis and electrical prognosis so
that even I myself am struck by the fact that the histories of the
diseases which I write read like novels and, as it were, dispense with
the serious features of the scientific character. Yet I must console
myself with the fact that the nature of the subject is apparently more
responsible for this issue than my own predilection. Focal diagnosis and
electrical reactions are really not important in the study of hysteria,
whereas a detailed discussion of the psychic processes, as one is wont
to receive it from the poet, and the application of a few psychological
formulæ, allows one to gain an insight into the course of events of
hysteria. Such histories should be considered like psychiatrical ones,
but they have the advantage over the latter in the fact that they give
the intimate connection between the history of the disease and the
morbid symptoms, a thing for which we still look in vain in the
biographies of other psychoses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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