Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
One day the patient came to me with a new symptom hardly twenty-four
hours old. She complained of a disagreeable prickling sensation in the
fingertips which had manifested itself every few hours since the day
before and forced her to make very peculiar jerky movements with the
fingers. I could not see the attack, otherwise I would have guessed its
meaning on seeing the finger movements but I immediately endeavored to
trace through hypnotic analysis the causation of this symptom (it was
really a minor hysterical attack). As the whole thing only existed for a
short time I hoped to be able to explain it and quickly remove it. To my
surprise without any hesitation she reproduced in chronological order a
whole row of scenes beginning in her early childhood. All these had
perhaps the same characteristics in the fact that she had suffered an
injustice without defense, something which could make her fingers jerk,
for example, scenes like the one of being forced to hold out her hand in
school while her teacher struck it with a ruler. But they were all banal
causes the right of which to enter into the etiology of an hysterical
symptom I have already opposed. It was different, however, with one
scene of her early girlhood which was connected with the others. The bad
uncle who suffered from rheumatism asked her to massage his back. She
did not dare refuse him. He was in bed while she was doing it and
suddenly threw off the covers, jumped up, attempting to get hold of her
and throw her down. Naturally she stopped the massage and in a moment
escaped and locked herself within her own room. She evidently did not
like to recall this experience and could not say whether she had seen
anything when the man suddenly exposed himself. The sensations of the
fingers could be explained as due to the suppressed impulse to punish
him, or it might simply have originated from the fact that she was at
that time massaging him. Only after this scene did she begin to talk
about the one experienced yesterday after which the sensitiveness and
jerkiness of the fingers appeared as a recurring memory symbol. The
uncle with whom she now lived begged her to play something for him. She
sat at the piano and accompanied herself singing, believing that her
aunt was out. Suddenly she appeared in the doorway, Rosalie jumped up,
closed the piano, and flung away the sheet of music. We can guess what
memories came to her mind, and the train of thought which she tried to
ward off at that moment, for the exasperation brought on by the unjust
accusation should have really urged her to leave the house, but on
account of her illness she was forced to remain in Vienna and had no
other shelter. The movement of the fingers which I saw during the
reproduction of this scene resembled a continuous jerking as if one
literally and figuratively would reject something like throwing away a
sheet of music or rejecting an unreasonable demand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account