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The conclusion I drew from all these observations was that experiences which have played an important pathogenic part, and all their subsidiary concomitants, are accurately retained in the patients memory even when they seem to be forgotten - when he is unable to call them to mind. As an example of the technique which ...
background, were hysterical and I made up my mind to embark on an analysis of them. To begin with she only knew that this first attack came over her while the was out shopping in the principal street. "What were you going to buy? - Different things, I believe; they were for a ball I had been invited to. - When was this...
A few weeks earlier another girl had died, and that had made a great stir in the town. So after all, I must have been seventeen at the time. - There, you see, I told you we could rely on the things that come into your head under the pressure of my hand. Now, can you remember what you were thinking about when you felt d...
The attack was now to some extent explained. But I still required to know of some precipitating factor which had provoked the memory at that particular time. I formed what happened to be a lucky conjecture. 7Do you remember the exact street you were walking along just then? - Certainly. It was the principal street, wit...
I did the counting over, and she decided definitely on one particular month and hesitated between two days immediately preceding the date of a fixed holiday. Does that fit in somehow with the date of the ball? She answered sheepishly: The ball was on the holiday. And now I remember, too, what an impression it made on m...
It required complete confidence in my technique on my side, and the occurrence to the patient of a few key ideas, before it was possible to re-awaken, after an interval of twenty-one years, these details of a forgotten experience in a sceptical person who was, in fact, in a waking state. But once all this had been gone...
While the children were having this game with me there was suddenly a strong smell. They had forgotten the pudding they were cooking and it was getting burnt. Ever since this I have been pursued by the smell. It is there all the time and becomes stronger when I am agitated. Do you see this scene clearly before your eye...
They joined in a little intrigue against me and said all sorts of things against me to the childrens grandfather, and I didnt get as much support as I had expected from the two gentlemen when I complained to them. So I gave notice to the Director (the childrens father). He answered in a very friendly way that I had bet...
It had turned out in fact to have been an objective sensation originally, and one which was intimately associated with an experience - a little scene - in which opposing affects had been in conflict with each other: her regret at leaving the children and the slights which were nevertheless urging her to make up her min...
In other words, what was the justification for the conversion which occurred? Why did she not always call to mind the scene itself, instead of the associated sensation which she singled out as a symbol of the recollection Such questions might be over-curious and superfluous if we were dealing with a hysteric of long st...
pathogenic. I accordingly inferred from Miss Lucy R.s having succumbed to hysterical conversion at the moment in question that among the determinants of the trauma there must have been one which she had sought intentionally to leave in obscurity and had made efforts to forget. If her fondness for the children and her s...
Were not responsible for our feelings, anyhow. It is distressing to me only because he is my employer and I am in his service and live in his house. I dont feel the same complete independence towards him that I could towards anyone else. And then I am only a poor girl and he is such a rich man of good family. People wo...
She now showed no resistance to throwing light on the origin of this inclination. She told me that for the first few years she had lived happily in the house, carrying out her duties and free from any unfulfillable wishes. One day, however, her employer, a serious, overworked man whose behaviour towards her had always ...
It only came on, she said, when she was very much agitated. The persistence of this mnemic symbol led me to suspect that, in addition to the main scene, it had taken over the representation of the many minor traumas subsidiary to that scene. We therefore looked about for anything else that might have to do with the sce...
What had happened was precisely what is always brought up against purely symptomatic treatment: I had removed one symptom only for its place to be taken by another. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to set about the task of getting rid of this new mnemic symbol by analysis. But this time she did not know where the subje...
Go on looking at the picture; it will develop and become more specialized. - Yes, there is a guest. Its the chief accountant. Hes an old man and he is as fond of the children as though they were his own grandchildren. But he comes to lunch so often that theres nothing special in that either. - Be patient and just keep ...
Then why did you feel this stab when the childrens father stopped the old man? His reprimand wasnt aimed at you. - It wasnt right of him to shout at an old man who was a valued friend of his and, whats more, a guest. He could have said it quietly. - So it was only the violent way he put it that hurt you? Did you feel e...
He said he held her responsible if anyone kissed the children on the mouth, that it was her duty not to permit it and that she was guilty of a dereliction of duty if she allowed it; if it ever happened again he would entrust his childrens upbringing to other hands. This had happened at a time when she still thought he ...
She was smiling and carried her head high. I thought for a moment that after all I had been wrong about the situation, and that the childrens governess had become the Directors fiancée. But she dispelled my notion. Nothing has happened. Its just that you dont know me. You have only seen me ill and depressed. Im always ...
Four months later I met the patient by chance in one of our summer resorts. She was in good spirits and assured me that her recovery had been maintained. 108 DISCUSSION I am not inclined to under-estimate the importance of the case that I have here described, even though the patient was suffering only from a slight and...
Her hysteria can therefore be described as an acquired one, and it presupposed nothing more than the possession of what is probably a very widespread proclivity - the proclivity to acquire hysteria. We have as yet scarcely a notion of what the features of this proclivity may be. In cases of this kind, however, the main...
Thus the mechanism which produces hysteria represents on the one hand an act of moral cowardice and on the other a defensive measure which is at the disposal of the ego. Often enough we have to admit that fending off increasing excitations by the generation of hysteria is, in the circumstances, the most expedient thing...
intended. What he wanted was to do away with an idea, as though it had never appeared, but all he succeeds in doing is to isolate it psychically. In the history of our present patient the traumatic moment was the moment of her employers outburst against her about his children being kissed by the lady. For a time, howev...
It is interesting to notice that the second symptom to develop masked the first, so that the first was not clearly perceived until the second had been cleared out of the way. It also seems to me worth while remarking upon the reversed course which had to be followed by the analysis as well. I have had the same experien...
refuge hut. I reached the top after a strenuous climb and, feeling refreshed and rested, was sitting deep in contemplation of the charm of the distant prospect. I was so lost in thought that at first I did not connect it with myself when these words reached my ears: Are you a doctor, sir? But the question was addressed...
Well, what is it you suffer from? T get so out of breath. Not always. But sometimes it catches me so that I think I shall suffocate. 112 This did not, at first sight, sound like a nervous symptom. But soon it occurred to me that probably it was only a description that stood for an anxiety attack: she was choosing short...
But on a day when that happens I dont dare to go anywhere; I think all the time someones standing behind me and going to catch hold of me all at once. So it was in fact an anxiety attack, and introduced by the signs of a hysterical aura or, more correctly, it was a hysterical attack the content of which was anxiety. Mi...
I could not venture to transplant hypnosis to these altitudes, but perhaps I might succeed with a simple talk. I should have to try a lucky guess. I had found often enough that in girls anxiety was a consequence of the horror by which a virginal mind is overcome when it is faced for the first time with the world of sex...
We looked everywhere, and at last Alois, the little boy, my cousin, said: "Why, Franziska must be in Fathers room!" And we both laughed; but we werent thinking anything bad. Then we went to my uncles room but found it locked. That seemed strange to me. Then Alois said: "Theres a window in the passage where you can look...
objected that while she was still a girl she had had attacks of anxiety, ending in fainting fits. I remained firm. When we had come to know each other better she suddenly said to me one day : IIl tell you now how I came by my attacks of anxiety when I was a girl. At that time I used to sleep in a room next to my parent...
(Translated into the terminology of our Preliminary Communication, this means: The affect itself created a hypnoid state, whose products were then cut off from associative connection with the ego-consciousness.) Tell me, Fraulein. Can it be that the head that you always see when you lose your breath is Franziskas head,...
morning I felt giddy again and was sick, and I stopped in bed and was sick without stopping for three days. We had often compared the symptomatology of hysteria with a pictographic script which has become intelligible after the discovery of a few bilingual inscriptions. In that alphabet being sick means disgust. So I s...
At last her aunt decided to move with her children and niece and take over the present inn, leaving her uncle alone with Franziska, who had meanwhile become pregnant. After this, however, to my astonishment she dropped these threads and began to tell me two sets of older stories, which went back two or three years earl...
From the way in which she reported having defended herself it seems to follow that she did not clearly recognize the attack as a sexual one. When I asked her if she knew what he was trying to do to her, she replied: Not at the time. It had become clear to her much later on, she said; she had resisted because it was unp...
Another time they were stopping the night at an inn at the village of N--; she and her uncle were in one room and Franziska in an adjoining one. She woke up suddenly in the night and saw a tall white figure by the door, on the point of turning the handle: Goodness, is that you, Uncle? What are you doing at the door? - ...
When she caught sight of the couple in intercourse, she at once established a connection between the new impression and these two sets of recollections, she began to understand them and at the same time to fend them off. There then followed a short period of working-out, of incubation, after which the symptoms of conve...
° Yes, now I am. Tell me just one thing. What part of his body was it that you felt that night? 118 But she gave me no more definite answer. She smiled in an embarrassed way, as though she had been found out, like someone who is obliged to admit that a fundamental position has been reached where there is not much more ...
Later, when all the disputes had broken out, my uncle gave way to a senseless rage against me. He kept saying that it was all my fault: if I hadnt chattered, it would never have come to a divorce. He kept threatening he would do something to me; and if he caught sight of me at a distance his face would get distorted wi...
I can well understand that it should have been precisely this last period - when there were more and more agitating scenes in the house and when her own state ceased to interest her aunt, who was entirely occupied with the dispute - that it should have been this period of accumulation and retention that left her the le...
The similarity lies in the fact that in the former experiences an element of consciousness was created which was excluded from the thought-activity of the ego and remained, as it were, in storage, while in the latter scene a new impression forcibly brought about an associative connection between this separated group an...
A further distinction in the psychical mechanism of this case lies in the fact that the scene of discovery, which we have described as auxiliary, deserves equally to be called traumatic. It was operative on account of its own content and not merely as something that revived previous traumatic experiences. It combined t...
in a very large number of cases - namely that a mere suspicion of sexual relations calls up the affect of anxiety in virginal individuals. (Footnote added 1924:) I venture after the lapse of so many years to lift the veil of discretion and reveal the fact that Katharina was not the niece but the daughter of the landlad...
In all these troubles and in all the sick-nursing involved, the largest share had fallen to our patient. My first interview with this young woman of twenty-four years of age did not help me to make much further progress in understanding the case. She seemed intelligent and mentally normal and bore her troubles, which i...
This hyperalgesia of the skin and muscles was not restricted to this area but could be observed more or less over the whole of both legs. The muscles were perhaps even more sensitive to pain than the skin; but there could be no question that the thighs were the parts most sensitive to both these kinds of pain. The moto...
A patient suffering from organic pains will, unless he is neurotic in addition, describe them definitely and calmly. He will say, for instance, that they are shooting pains, that they occur at certain intervals, that they extend from this place to that and that they seem to him to be brought on by one thing or another....
(A hypochondriac or a person affected with anxiety neurosis.) 123 But there is a second factor which is even more decisively in favour of this view of the pains. If one stimulates an area sensitive to pain in someone with an organic illness or in a neurasthenic, the patients face takes on an expression of discomfort or...
Her other gestures were evidently very slight hints of a hysterical attack. To begin with there was no explanation of the unusual localization of her hysterogenic zone. The fact that the hyperalgesia mainly affected the muscles also gave food for thought. The disorder which is most usually responsible for diffuse and l...
In particular, she seemed to take quite a liking to the painful shocks produced by the high tension apparatus, and the stronger these were the more they seemed to push her own pains into the background. In the meantime my colleague was preparing the ground for psychical treatment, and when, after four weeks of my prete...
her illness. If so, no special technique is required to enable her to reproduce the story of her illness. The interest shown in her by the physician, the understanding of her which he allows her to feel and the hopes of recovery he holds out to her - all these will decide the patient to yield up her secret. From the be...
I would begin by getting the patient to tell me what was known to her and I would carefully note the points at which some train of thought remained obscure or some link in the causal chain seemed to be missing. And afterwards I would penetrate into deeper layers of her memories at these points by carrying out an invest...
affection of the eyes as well as by nervous states. Thus it came about that she found herself drawn into especially intimate contact with her father, a vivacious man of the world, who used to say that this daughter of his took the place of a son and a friend with whom he could exchange thoughts. Although the girls mind...
Then, however, the blow fell which destroyed the happiness of the family. Her father had concealed, or had perhaps himself overlooked, a chronic affection of the heart, and he was brought home unconscious one day suffering from a pulmonary oedema. He was nursed for eighteen months, and Elisabeth saw to it that she play...
When the year of mourning had passed, her elder sister married a gifted and energetic man. He occupied a responsible position and his intellectual powers seemed to promise him a great future. But to his closer acquaintances he exhibited a morbid sensitiveness and an egoistic insistence on his fads; and he was the first...
But her chief reproach against him remained the fact that, for the sake of a prospective promotion, he moved with his small family to a remote town in Austria and thus helped to increase her mothers isolation. On this occasion Elisabeth felt acutely her helplessness, her inability to afford her mother a substitute for ...
The three families were united at a summer holiday resort, and it was hoped that Elisabeth, who had been exhausted by the anxieties of the last few months, would make a complete recovery during what was the first period of freedom from sorrows and fears that the family had enjoyed since her fathers death. It was precis...
had been there for barely a fortnight when they were called back by the news that her sister, who had now taken to her bed, was in a very bad state. There followed an agonizing journey, during which Elisabeth was tormented not only by her pains but by dreadful expectations; on their arrival at the station there were si...
Her widowed brother-in-law was inconsolable and withdrew from his wifes family. It appeared that his own family, which had been estranged from him during his short, happy marriage, thought this was a favourable moment for drawing him back into their own circle. There was no way of preserving the unity that had existed ...
Unreconciled to her fate, embittered by the failure of all her little schemes for reestablishing the familys former glories, with those she loved dead or gone away or estranged, unready to take refuge in the love of some unknown man - she had lived for eighteen months in almost complete seclusion, with nothing to occup...
We might perhaps suppose that the patient had formed an association between her painful mental impressions and the bodily pains which she happened to be experiencing at the same time, and that now, in her life of memories, the was using her physical feelings as a symbol of her mental ones. But it remained unexplained w...
But I was obliged to admit that she was in the right. If I had stopped the patients psychical treatment at this stage, the case of Fraulein Elisabeth von R. would clearly have thrown no light on the theory of hysteria. But I continued my analysis because I firmly expected that deeper levels of her consciousness would y...
be hypnotized. In this extremity the idea occurred to me of resorting to the device of applying pressure to the head, the origin of which I have described in full in the case history of Miss Lucy. I carried this out by instructing the patient to report to me faithfully whatever appeared before her inner eye or passed t...
Numerous recollections of reading together, of exchanging ideas, and of remarks made by him which were repeated to her by other people, bore witness to the gradual growth in her of a conviction that he loved her and understood her and that marriage with him would not involve the sacrifices on her part which she dreaded...
This was the last time she left her sick father for a whole evening. She seldom met her friend after this. After her fathers death the young man seemed to keep away from her out of respect for her sorrow. The course of his life then took him in other directions. She had to familiarize herself by degrees with the though...
conflict, a situation of incompatibility. The outcome of this conflict was that the erotic idea was repressed from association and the affect attaching to that idea was used to intensify or revive a physical pain which was present simultaneously or shortly before. Thus it was an instance of the mechanism of conversion ...
She only remembered a single attack of pain, which had only lasted a day or two and had not attracted her attention. I now directed my enquiries to this first appearance of the pains. I succeeded in reviving the patients memory of it with certainty. At that very time a relative had visited them and she had been unable ...
T cannot exclude the possibility, though I cannot establish the fact, that these pains, which chiefly affected the thighs, were of a neurasthenic nature. 134 The discovery of the reason for the first conversion opened a second, fruitful period of the treatment. The patient surprised me soon afterwards by announcing tha...
As atule the patient was free from pain when we started work. If, then, by a question or by pressure upon her head I called up a memory, a sensation of pain would make its first appearance, and this was usually so sharp that the patient would give a start and put her hand to the painful spot. The pain that was thus aro...
In the course of the analysis I sometimes followed the spontaneous fluctuations in her condition; and I sometimes followed my own estimate of the situation when I considered that I had not completely exhausted some portion of the story of her illness. During this work I made some interesting observations, whose lessons...
fresh memories which had not yet reached the surface. For instance, I sent her to visit her sisters grave, and I encouraged her to go to a party at which she might once more come across the friend of her youth. In the next place, I obtained some insight into the manner of origin of what might be described as a monosymp...
The original painful spot in her right thigh had related to her nursing her father; the area of pain had extended from this spot to neighbouring regions as a result of fresh traumas. Here, therefore, what we were dealing with was not strictly speaking a single physical symptom, linked with a variety of mnemic complexes...
She went on to add a number of other memories to this first example of fright while she was standing, till she came to the fearful scene in which once again she stood, as though spellbound, by her sisters death-bed. This whole chain of memories might be expected to show that there was a legitimate connection between he...
connection between the astasia-abasia and the first occurrence of conversion. Among the episodes which, according to this catalogue, seemed to have made walking painful, one received special prominence: a walk which she had taken at the health resort in the company of a number of other people and which was supposed to ...
I asked her what it was in the walk that might have brought on the pain and she gave me the somewhat obscure reply that the contrast between her own loneliness and her sick sisters married happiness (which her brother-in-laws behaviour kept constantly before her eyes) had been painful to her. Another scene, which was v...
And for quite a time after this, lying down was actually more painful to her than walking or standing. In this way, firstly, the painful region had been extended by the addition of adjacent areas: every fresh theme which had a pathogenic effect had cathected a new region in the legs; secondly, each of the scenes which ...
In view of this, I was forced to suppose that among the influences that went to the building up of her abasia, these reflections of hers played a part; I could not help thinking that the patient had done nothing more nor less than look for a symbolic expression of her painful thoughts and that she had found it in the i...
Sometimes, indeed, her behaviour fulfilled my highest expectations, and during such periods it was surprising with what promptitude the different scenes relating to a given theme emerged in a strictly chronological order. It was as though she were reading a lengthy book of pictures, whose pages were being turned over b...
she was not always prepared to communicate it to me, and tried to suppress once more what had been conjured up. I could think of two motives for this concealment. Either she was applying criticism to the idea, which she had no right to do, on the ground of its not being important enough or of its being an irrelevant re...
It often happened that it was not until I had pressed her head three times that she produced a piece of information; but she herself would remark afterwards: I could have said it to you the first time. - And why didnt you? - I thought it wasnt what was wanted, or I thought I could avoid it, but it came back each time. ...
My patient thereupon got up and asked that we might break off for the day: she had heard her brother-in-law arrive and enquire for her. Up to that point she had been free from pain, but after the interruption her facial expression and gait betrayed the sudden emergence of severe pains. My suspicion was strengthened by ...
In this mood she was deeply affected by her second sisters happy marriage - by seeing with what touching care he looked after her, how they understood each other at a single glance and how sure they seemed to be of each other. It was no doubt to be regretted that the second pregnancy followed so soon after the first, a...
It was not until the afternoon, when she had had the warm bath, that the pains broke out, and she was never again free from them. I tried to discover what thoughts were occupying her mind while she was having the bath; but I learnt only that the bath-house had reminded her of the members of her family who had gone away...
them, the short journey from Vienna to the summer resort in its neighbourhood where her sister lived, their reaching there in the evening, the hurried walk through the garden to the door of the small garden house, the silence within and the oppressive darkness; how her brother-in-law was not there to receive them, and ...
She succeeded in sparing herself the painful conviction that she loved her sisters husband, by inducing physical pains in herself instead; and it was in the moments when this conviction sought to force itself upon her (on her walk with him, during her morning reverie, in the bath, by her sisters bedside) that her pains...
But it was a long time before my two pieces of consolation - that we are not responsible for our feelings, and that her behaviour, the fact that she had fallen ill in these circumstances, was sufficient evidence of her moral character - it was a long time before these consolations of mine made any impression on her. 14...
One evening they were carrying on such a lively conversation together and seemed to be getting on so well that his fiancee had interrupted them half-seriously with the remark: The truth is, you two would have suited each other splendidly. Another time, at a party where they knew nothing of his engagement, the young man...
I learned from her that on closer examination the charge of unfeeling blackmail which had been brought by the elder brother-in-law against the widower and which had been so painful to Elisabeth had had to be withdrawn. No stain was left on the young mans character. It was a misunderstanding due to the different value w...
mother) nor the family advisers were particularly in favour of a marriage. The young mans health was by no means good and had received a fresh set-back from the death of his beloved wife. It was not at all certain, either, that his mental state was yet sufficiently recovered for him to contract a new marriage. This was...
She left Vienna with her mother to meet her eldest sister and her family and to spend the summer together. I have a few words to add upon the further course of Fraulein Elisabeth von R. s case. Some weeks after we had separated I received a despairing letter from her mother. At her first attempt, she told me, to discus...
Her brother-in-laws connection with the family has remained unaltered. In the spring of 1894 I heard that she was going to a private ball for which I was able to get an invitation, and I did not allow the opportunity to escape me of seeing my former patient whirl past in a lively dance. Since then, by her own inclinati...
Case histories of this kind are intended to be judged like psychiatric ones; they have, however, one advantage over the latter, namely an intimate connection between the story of the patients sufferings and the symptoms of his illness - a connection for which we still search in vain in the biographies of other psychose...
No severe case of neuropsychosis had occurred among her close relatives. Such was the patients nature, which was now assailed by painful emotions, beginning with the lowering effect of nursing her beloved father through a long illness. There are good reasons for the fact that sick-nursing plays such a significant part ...
But if he dies, and the period of mourning sets in, during which the only things that seem to have value are those that relate to the person who has died, these impressions that have not yet been dealt with come into the picture as well; and after a short interval of exhaustion the hysteria, whose seeds were sown durin...
I suspect that this depended on the amount of leisure which her current household duties allowed. In addition to these outbursts of weeping with which she made up arrears and which followed close upon the fatal termination of the illness, this lady celebrated annual festivals of remembrance at the period of her various...
lady, who had no less strength of character than intelligence, was ashamed of the violent effect produced in her by these reminiscences. I must emphasize once more: this woman is not ill; her postponed abreaction was not a hysterical process, however much it resembled one. We may ask why it should be that one instance ...
She listened to these in deep sleep, to the accompaniment of floods of tears; but, apart from this, they caused very little change in her condition. One day she became talkative in her hypnosis and told me that the cause of her depression was the breaking off of her engagement, which had occurred several months earlier...
I continued to address her while she was in deep somnambulism and saw her burst into tears each time without ever answering me; and one day, round about the anniversary of her engagement, her whole state of depression passed off - an event which brought me the credit of a great therapeutic success by hypnotism. But I m...
It did not become clear whether she was presented with this first conflict on one occasion only or on several; the latter alternative is the more likely. An exactly similar conflict - though of higher ethical significance and even more clearly established by the analysis - developed once more some years later and led t...
It is, I think, safe to say that at that time the patient did not become clearly conscious of her feelings for her brother-in-law, powerful though they were, except on a few occasions, and then only momentarily. If it had been otherwise, she would also inevitably have become conscious of the contradiction between those...
the rest of the ideational content of her mind. But how could it have come about that an ideational group with so much emotional emphasis on it was kept so isolated? In general, after all, the part played in association by an idea increases in proportion to the amount of its affect. We can answer this question if we ta...
I cannot, I must confess, give any hint of how a conversion of this kind is brought about. It is obviously not carried out in the same way as an intentional and voluntary action. It is a process which occurs under the pressure of the motive of defence in someone whose organization - or a temporary modification of it - ...

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