Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
I need only recall the various forms in which this resistance manifested
itself. In the first place, the pressure experiment usually fails the
first or second time. The patient then expresses himself disappointed,
saying, “I believed that some idea would occur to me, but I only thought
so; as attentive as I was nothing came.” Such attitudes assumed by the
patient are not yet to be counted as a resistance; we usually answer to
that, “You were really too anxious, the second time things will come.”
And they really come. It is remarkable how completely the patients—even
the most tractable and the most intelligent—can forget the agreement
which they have previously entered into. They have promised to tell
everything that occurs to them under the pressure of the hand, be it
closely related to them or not, and whether it is agreeable to them to
say it or not; that is, they are to tell everything without any choice,
or influence by critique or affect. Yet they do not keep their promise,
it is apparently beyond their powers. The work repeatedly stops, they
continue to assert that this time nothing came to their mind. One needs
not believe them, and one must always assume, and also say, that they
hold back something because they believe it to be unimportant, or
perceive it as painful. One must insist, repeat the pressure, and assume
an assured attitude until one really hears something. The patient then
adds, “I could have told you that the first time.”—“Why did you not say
it?”—“I could not believe that that could be it. Only after it returned
repeatedly have I decided to tell it;” or, “I had hoped that it would
not be just that, that I could spare myself from saying it, but only
after it could not be repressed have I noticed that I could not avoid
it.”—Thus the patient subsequently betrays the motives of a resistance
which he did not at first wish to admit. He apparently could not help
offering resistances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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