_Such observations seem to demonstrate the pathogenic analogy between simple hysteria and traumatic neurosis and justify a broader conception of “traumatic hysteria.”_ The active etiological factor in traumatic neurosis is really not the insignificant bodily injury but the affect of the fright, that is, the psychic trauma. In an analogous manner our investigations show that the causes of many, if not of all, cases of hysteria can be designated as psychic traumas. Every experience which produces the painful affect of fear, anxiety, shame or of psychic pain may act as a psychic trauma. Whether an experience becomes of traumatic importance naturally depends on the person affected as well as on the determination to be mentioned later. In ordinary hysteria instead of one big trauma we not seldom find many partial traumas, grouped causes which can be of traumatic significance only when summarized and which belong together in so far as they form small fragments of the sorrowful tale. In still other cases apparently indifferent circumstances gain traumatic dignity through their connection with the real effective event or with a period of time of special excitability which they then retain but which otherwise would have no significance. Nevertheless the causal connection between the provoking psychic trauma and the hysterical phenomena does not perhaps resemble the trauma which as the _agent provocateur_ would call forth the symptom which would become independent and continue to exist. We have to claim still more, namely, that the psychic trauma or the memory of the same acts like a foreign body which even long after its penetration must continue to influence like a new causative factor. The proof of this we see in a most remarkable phenomenon which at the same time gives to our discoveries a distinct practical interest. We found, at first to our greatest surprise, _that the individual hysterical symptoms immediately disappeared without returning if we succeeded in thoroughly awakening the memories of the causal process with its accompanying affect, and if the patient circumstantially discussed the process giving free play to the affect_. Affectless memories are almost utterly useless. The psychic process originally rebuffed must be reproduced as vividly as possible so as to bring it back into the _statum nascendi_ and then be thoroughly “talked over.” At the same time if we deal with such exciting manifestations as convulsions, neuralgias and hallucinations they appear once more with their full intensity and then vanish forever. Functional attacks like paralyses and anesthesias likewise disappear, but naturally without any appreciable distinctness of their momentary aggravation.[11]