Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
In this connection it finally came to the reproduction of the facial
neuralgia which I myself had still treated as actual attacks. I was
desirous of knowing whether we would find here a psychic causation. When
I attempted to evoke the traumatic scene, the patient soon imagined
herself in a period during which she felt marked psychic sensitiveness
against her husband. She related a conversation with him and a remark
that he made which aggravated her very much. She then suddenly grasped
her cheek, crying aloud with pain, and said, “That was like a slap in
the face”—with this both the attack and the pain came to an end. There
is no doubt that here, too, we dealt with a symbolization. She had felt
as if she really received a slap in the face. Now everybody will ask how
the sensation of “a slap in the face” can lead to the manifestations of
a trigeminal neuralgia, to its limiting itself to the second and third
branch, and to its being aggravated on opening the mouth and mastication
(not by talking!).
The following day the neuralgia reappeared, but this time it could be
solved by the reproduction of another scene the content of which equally
showed a supposed insult. This process continued for nine days; from the
result it seemed that for years, aggravations, especially through words,
produced new attacks of this facial neuralgia by way of symbolization.
But finally we also succeeded in reproducing the first attack of the
neuralgia which occurred more than fifteen years before. Here there was
no symbolization but a conversion through coincidence. It was a painful
sight which recalled to her mind a reproach and this caused her to
repress another series of thoughts. We have here, then, a case of
conflict and defense, and the origin of the neuralgia in this moment
could not be explained if we do not wish to assume that she then
suffered from slight toothache or facial pains, a thing not improbable,
as she was then in the first months of pregnancy.
The result of the explanation showed that this neuralgia became the mark
of a definite psychic excitement through the usual road of conversion
but that afterward it could be awakened through associative
reminiscences of thoughts and symbolic conversions. It was really the
same procedure as encountered in Miss Elisabeth v. R.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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