Precisely as in the primitive-cathartic method, the affects pushing in here
are disemburdened here, but at the same time, the connection between the
existent sick-phenomena and the causes having a place here were
automatically conscious to the patient. In some cases suggestion is called
upon for help in order to free an affect or to direct the attention to the
expected scene.
In most cases the process goes on itself, after the introduction of
hypnosis. If the sleep is too deep, then the ideas are transferred into real
dreams, which the patient immediately recognizes as such, or the production
of scenes discontinues; the superconsciousness no longer works.
The scenes described are usually recalled by the patients, just as they were
experienced by them, even when taken from the earliest youth. The reality
of the events which happened in childhood, lived over again in hypnose, are
substantiated as much as possible by the patient's parents or associates. He
succeeds best in inducing this semi-sleep by exhorting the patient as he
closes his eyes not to bother about whether he sleeps or not, but to fasten
his attention upon the scenes which are about to present themselves; that
is, to think himself, so to speak, into the state of someone at a moving
picture show.
As an example I give a fragment of a Frankian analysis of a case of
FEAR NEUROSIS (ANGST-NEUROSE)
Y. B., born 1883, a law clerk. Patient comes on the third of December,
1908, to Frank's consultation hour; he complains of periods of short breath;
during these he feels as if his heart were ceasing to beat, especially when
he is just going to bed. He feels then as if something heavy were striking
him on the chest, great restlessness, and a feeling of faintness comes over
him. After taking a glass of wine the condition is aggravated and becomes
insupportable. These attacks come once or twice a day, mostly in the
evenings. At times they keep off for eight or ten days. He lives
continually in an excited state, he suffers from palpitations of the heart,
from pain in the left thigh, pain in the left side, and at night cannot get
to sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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