The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormalPrince, Morton
Science
The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal
Prince, Morton
Psychology, Pathological; Subconsciousness
Quite recently this subject began to suffer from general fatigue,
insomnia, distressing dreams, hysterical crying, indefinable anxiety and
pseudo twilight states or extreme states of abstraction. In these states
she became oblivious of her environment, did not hear the conversation
going on about her, nor answer when directly spoken to. This became so
noticeable that she became the jest of her companions. In these states
her mind was always occupied with reveries (not fantasies), though
mostly pleasant, regarding a very near relative who had died about six
months previously. Her distressing dreams also concerned this relative.
It appeared, therefore, probable, on the face of the symptoms that they
were in some way related to this relative’s death.
Now it transpired, as I already knew, that the relative had died under
somewhat tragic circumstances and that our subject’s experience during
the last illness was unusually distressing and sorrowful. _This
experience, she asserted, she could not bear to speak or even think
about and over and over again had refused to do so and put it out of her
mind. She further asserted that her reason for this attitude was the
distressing nature of the scenes in which she took part._
Now I did not believe that this was the true reason, although given in
good faith. It was improbable on its face. To say that a grown woman,
forty years of age, could not do what every woman can do, tolerate
sorrowful memories simply because they were sorrowful, and must perforce
put them out of her mind, is sheer nonsense. There must be some other
reason.
On examining a dream it was found to be peculiar in one respect: It was
not an imaginative or fantastic composition, but a detailed and precise
living over again of the scenes at the death bed: that is to say, it was
a sort of somnambulistic state. In recalling this dream[188] she could
not for some time recover the ending. Finally it “broke through,” as she
expressed it. The dream was as follows: First came many details of the
vigil of the last night of the illness; then she went to her room and to
bed to snatch a few moments’ sleep; she was waked up by the husband of
the dying relative appearing in her room. He sat on the edge of her bed
and said to her, “All is over.” Up to this point the facts of the dream
were actual representations in great detail of the actual facts as they
had occurred, but at this moment the dream presented a fact which had
not occurred in the real scene; she suddenly, in the dream, sat up in
bed and exclaimed, “My God! then I ought to have sent for the doctor!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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