Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
The ab-reaction (abreagiren), however, is not the only form of discharge
at the disposal of the normal psychic mechanism of the healthy person
who has experienced a psychic trauma. The memory of the trauma even
where it has not been ab-reacted enters into the great complex of the
association. It joins the other experiences which are perhaps
antagonistic to it and thus undergoes correction through the other
ideas. For example, after an accident the memory of the danger and
(dimmed) repetition of the fright is accompanied by the recollection of
the further course, the rescue, and the consciousness of present
security. The memory of a grievance may be corrected by a rectification
of the state of affairs by reflecting upon one’s own dignity and similar
things. Thus the normal person is able to cause a disappearance of the
accompanying affect by means of association.
In addition there appears that general blurring of impressions, that
fading of memories which we call “forgetting,” and which above all wears
out the affective ideas no longer active.
It follows from our observations that those memories which become the
causes of hysterical phenomena have been preserved for a long time with
wonderful freshness and with their perfect emotional tone. As a further
striking and a later realizable fact we have to mention that the
patients do not perhaps have the same control of these as of their other
memories of life. On the contrary, _these experiences are either
completely lacking from the memory of the patients in their usual
psychic state or at most exist greatly abridged_. Only after the
patients are questioned in the hypnotic state do these memories appear
with the undiminished vividness of fresh occurrences. Thus one of our
patients in a hypnotic state reproduced with hallucinatory vividness
throughout half a year all that excited her during an acute hysteria on
the same days of the preceding year. Her mother’s diary which was
unknown to the patient proved the faultless accuracy of the
reproduction. Another patient, partly in hypnosis and partly in
spontaneous attacks, went through with a hallucinatory distinctness all
experiences of a hysterical psychosis which she passed through ten years
before and for the greatest part of which she was amnesic until its
reappearance. She also showed with surprising integrity and sentient
force some etiologically important memories of fifteen to twenty-five
years’ duration which on their return acted with the full affective
force of new experiences.
The reason for this we can only find in the fact that in all the
aforesaid relations these memories assume an exceptional position in
reference to disappearance. _It was really shown that these memories
correspond to traumas which were not sufficiently ab-reacted to_
(“abreagirt”). On closer investigation of the reasons for this
prevention we can find at least two series of determinants through which
the reaction to the trauma was discontinued.
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