Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
One generally experiences less trouble in the reproduction of pictures
than thoughts. Hysterical patients who are usually visual are easier to
manage than patients suffering from obsessions. Once the picture emerges
from the memory we can hear the patient state that as he proceeds to
describe it, it proportionately fades away and becomes indistinct; the
patient wears it out, so to speak, by transforming, it into words. We
then orient ourselves through the memory picture itself in order to find
the direction towards which the work should be continued. We say to the
patient, “Just look again at the picture, has it disappeared?”—“As a
whole, yes, but I still see this detail.”—“Then this must have some
meaning, you will either see something new, or this remnant will remind
you of something.” When the work is finished the visual field becomes
free again, and a new picture can be called forth; but at other times
such a picture, in spite of its having been described, remains
persistently before the inner eye of the patient, and I take this as a
sign that he still has something important to tell me concerning its
theme. As soon as this has been accomplished, the picture disappears
like a wandering spirit returning to rest.
It is naturally of great value for the progress of the analysis to carry
our point with the patient, otherwise we have to depend on what he
thinks is proper to impart. It, therefore, will be pleasant to hear that
the pressure procedure never failed except in a single case which I
shall discuss later, but which I can now characterize by the fact that
there was a special motive for the resistance. To be sure, it may happen
under certain conditions that the procedure may be applied without
bringing anything to light; as, for example, we may ask for the further
etiology of a symptom when the same has already been exhausted; or, we
may investigate for the psychic genealogy of a symptom, perhaps a pain,
which really was of somatic origin. In these cases the patient equally
insists that nothing occurred to him, and he is right. We should strive
to avoid doing an injustice to the patient by making it a general rule
not to lose sight of his features while he calmly lies before us during
the analysis. One can then learn to distinguish, without any difficulty,
the psychic calm in the real non appearance of a reminiscence from the
tension and emotional signs under which the patient labors in trying to
disavow the emerging reminiscences for the purpose of defense. The
differential diagnostic application of the pressure procedure is really
based on such experiences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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