Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
I have now occupied myself with the motive and mechanism of this case of
hysteria, it still remains to discuss the determination of the
hysterical symptoms. Why should just the pains in the legs be selected
to represent the psychic pains? The circumstances of the case point to
the fact that this somatic pain was not created by the neurosis but was
merely utilized, aggravated, and retained by it. I will add that in most
of the cases of hysterical algias into which I have been able to gain an
insight the conditions were similar, that is, there was to begin with
always a real organically founded pain. It is always the most common,
the most widespread pains of humanity that seem to be most frequently
called upon to play a part in hysteria. Among the most common are the
periosteal and neuralgic pains of the teeth, headaches which originate
from so many different sources, and not in a lesser degree the so often
mistaken rheumatic pains of the muscles. The first attack of pain which
Miss Elisabeth v. R. had while she nursed her father, I consider to have
been organically determined, for I received no information when I
investigated for its psychic motive, and I admit that I am inclined to
attribute differential diagnostic significance to my methods of evoking
hidden memories if they are carefully applied. This original rheumatic
pain[22] became in the patient the memory symbol for her painful psychic
emotions, and as far as I can see, for more than one reason. First and
principally because it existed in consciousness almost simultaneously
with the other excitements, and second because it was or could be
connected in many ways with the ideation of that time. At all events it
was perhaps a remote consequence of the nursing, of her want of
exercise, and the poor nutrition entailed by her duties as nurse. But
this hardly became clear to the patient and what is more important is
the fact that she had to perceive it during significant moments of the
nursing, as for example, when she jumped out of bed in the cold room to
respond to her father’s call. Even more decisive for the direction taken
by the conversion must have been the other manner of associative
connection, namely, the fact that for many days one of her painful legs
came in contact with the swollen leg of her father during the changing
of bandages. The location on the right leg distinguished by this contact
remained henceforth the focus and starting point of the pains, an
artificial hysterogenic zone the origin of which can be plainly seen in
this case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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