Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
5. Where we deal with chronic progressive hysterias with moderate or
continued productions of hysterical symptoms, we learn to regret the
lack of a causally effective therapy, but we also learn to value the
indications of the cathartic method as a symptomatic remedy. We then
deal with an injury produced by an etiology which continues to act
chronically. We have to strengthen the capacity for resistance of the
nervous system of our patient, and we must bear in mind that the
existence of an hysterical symptom signifies a weakening of resistance
of the nervous system, and represents a predisposing moment. From the
mechanism of monosymptomatic hysteria we know that a new hysterical
symptom generally originates as an addition to and as an analogy of one
already in existence. The location once penetrated represents the weak
spot which can be penetrated again. The split off psychic group plays
the part of the provoking crystal from which a formerly omitted
crystallization emerges with great facility. To remove the already
existing symptoms, to do away with the psychic alterations lying at
their basis, is the return to the patients the full measure of their
resistance capacity, with which they are successfully able to resist the
noxious influences. One can do a great deal for the patient by such long
continued watchfulness and occasional “chimney-sweeping.”
6. I still have to mention the apparent contradiction arising between
the admission that not all hysterical symptoms are psychogenic, and the
assertion that they can all be removed by psychotherapeutic procedures.
The solution lies in the fact that some of these non-psychogenic
symptoms, though they represent morbid symptoms, as, for instance, the
stigmata, should nevertheless not be designated as affections, and hence
it cannot be practically noticed even if they remain after the treatment
is finished. Other symptoms of a similar nature seem to be taken along
indirectly by the psychogenic symptoms, for indirectly they really
depend on some psychic causation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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