Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The connection is often so clear that it is perfectly manifest how the
causal event produced just this and no other phenomenon. It is quite
clearly determined by the cause. Thus let us take the most banal
example; if a painful affect originates while eating but is repressed,
it may produce nausea and vomiting and continue for months as a
hysterical symptom. A girl was anxiously distressed while watching at a
sick bed. She fell into a dreamy state and experienced a frightful
hallucination, and at the same time her right arm hanging over the back
of a chair became numb. This resulted in a paralysis, contracture, and
anesthesia of that arm. She wanted to pray but could find no words, but
finally succeeded in uttering an English prayer for children. Later, on
developing a very grave and most complicated hysteria, she spoke, wrote,
and understood only English, whereas her native tongue was
incomprehensible to her for a year and a half. A very sick child finally
falls asleep. The mother exerts all her will power to make no noise to
awaken it, but just because she resolved to do so she emits a clicking
sound with her tongue (“hysterical counter-will”). This was later
repeated on another occasion when she wished to be absolutely quiet,
developing into a tic which in the form of tongue clicking accompanied
every excitement for years. A very intelligent man was present while his
brother was anesthetized and his ankylosed hip stretched. At the moment
when the joint yielded and crackled he perceived severe pain in his own
hip which continued for almost a year.
In other cases the connection is not so simple, there being only as it
were a symbolic relation between the cause and the pathological
phenomenon, just as in the normal dream. Thus psychic pain may result in
neuralgia, or the affect of moral disgust may cause vomiting. We have
studied patients who were wont to make the most prolific use of such
symbolization. In still other cases such a determination is at first
sight incomprehensible, yet to this group belong the typical hysterical
symptoms such as hemianesthesia, contraction of visual field,
epileptiform convulsions and many others. The explanation of our views
on this group we have to reserve for the more detailed discussion of the
subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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