HYSTERICAL FANCIES AND THEIR RELATIONS TO BISEXUALITY.[57]
The delusional formations of paranoiacs containing the greatness and
sufferings of their own ego, which manifest themselves quite typically
in almost monotonous forms are universally familiar. Furthermore,
through numerous communications we became acquainted with the peculiar
organizations by means of which certain perverts put into operation
their sexual gratifications, be it in fancy or reality. On the other
hand it may sound rather novel to some to hear that quite analogous
psychic formations regularly appear in all psychoneuroses, especially in
hysteria, and that these so called hysterical fancies show important
relations to the causation of the neurotic symptoms.
Of the same source and of the normal prototype are all these fantastic
creations, so called reveries of youth, which have already gained a
certain consideration in the literature, though not a sufficient
one.[58] They are perhaps equally frequent in both sexes; in girls and
women they seem to be wholly of an erotic nature, while in men they are
of an erotic or ambitious nature. Yet even in men the significance of
the erotic moment is not to be put in the second place, for on examining
more closely the reveries of men we generally learn that all these
heroic acts are accomplished, that all these successes are acquired in
order to please a woman and to be preferred to other men.[59] These
fancies are wish gratifications which emanate from privation and
longing. They are justly named “day dreams” for they give the key for
the understanding of night dreams in which the nucleus of the dream
formation is produced by just such complicated, disfigured day fancies
which are misunderstood by the conscious psychic judgment.[60]
These day dreams are garnished with great interest, are cautiously
nurtured, and coyly guarded, as if they were numbered among the most
intimate estates of personality. On the street, however, the day dreamer
can be readily recognized by a sudden, as if absent minded smile, by
talking to himself, or by a running-like acceleration of his gait
wherein he designates the acme of the imaginary situation.
All hysterical attacks which I have been thus far able to examine proved
to be such involuntary incursions of day dreams. Observation leaves no
doubt that such fancies may exist as unconscious or conscious and
whenever they become unconscious they may also become pathogenic, that
is, they may express themselves in symptoms and attacks. Under favorable
conditions it is possible for consciousness to seize such unconscious
fancies. One of my patients whose attention I have called to her fancies
narrated that once while in the street she suddenly found herself in
tears, and rapidly reflecting over the cause of her weeping the fancy
became clear to her. She fancied herself in delicate relationship with a
piano virtuoso familiar in the city, but whom she did not know
personally. In her fancy she bore him a child (she was childless), and
he then deserted her, leaving her and her child in misery. At this
passage of the romance she burst into tears.
The unconscious fancies are either from the first unconscious, having
been formed in the unconscious, or what is more frequently the case they
were once conscious fancies, day dreams, and were then intentionally
forgotten, merging into the unconscious by “repression.” Their content
then either remained the same or underwent a transformation, so that the
present unconscious fancy represents a descendant of the once conscious
one. The unconscious fancy stands in a very important relation to the
sexual life of the person, it is really identical with that fancy which
helped it towards sexual gratification during a period of masturbation.
The masturbating act (in the broader sense the onanistic) then consisted
of two parts, the evocation of the fancy, and the active performance of
self gratification at the height of the same. This combination is
familiarly in itself a soldering.[61] Originally this action was a
purely auto-erotic undertaking for the pleasure obtained from a certain
so called erogenous part of the body. Later this action blended with a
wish presentation from the sphere of the object loved, and served for a
partial realization of the situation in which this fancy culminated. If,
then, the person forgoes in this manner the masturbo-fantastic
gratification, the action remains undone, the fancy, however, changes
from a conscious to an unconscious one. If no other manner of sexual
gratification occurs, if the person remains abstinent and does not
succeed in sublimating his libido, that is, in diverting the sexual
excitement to a higher aim, we then have the conditions for the
refreshment of the unconscious fancy; it grows exuberantly and with all
the force of the desire for love at least a fragment of its content
becomes a morbid symptom.
The unconscious fancies are then the nearest psychical first steps of a
whole series of hysterical symptoms. The hysterical symptoms are nothing
other than unconscious fancies brought to light by “conversion,” and
insofar as they are somatic symptoms they are frequently enough taken
from the spheres of the sexual feelings and motor innervations which
originally accompanied the former still conscious fancies. In this way
the disuse of onanism is really made retrograde, and the final aim of
the whole pathological process, the restoration of the primary sexual
gratification, though it never becomes perfect, in a manner always
achieves a certain approximation.
The interest of him who studies hysteria turns directly from the
symptoms to the fancies from which the former originate. The technique
of psychoanalysis gives the means of finding out from the symptoms the
unconscious fancies, and then of bringing them back to the patient’s
consciousness. In this way it was found that the unconscious fancies of
hysterics perfectly correspond in content to the consciously performed
gratification situations of perverts. Those who lack examples of such
nature need only recall the historical managements of the Roman Caesars
whose frenzies were naturally only conditioned by the unrestricted
fullness of the fancy creators. The delusional formations of paranoiacs
are of the same nature, they are fancies which directly become
conscious, and which are borne by the masochistic-sadistic components of
the sexual impulse. Complete counterparts of these can also be found in
certain unconscious fancies of hysterics. It is a familiar, practically
significant fact that hysterics express their fancies not as symptoms
but in conscious realization, and in this way they feign and commit
murders, assaults, and sexual aggressions.
All that can be found out about the sexuality of the psychoneurotic can
be ascertained by the psychoanalytic examination which leads from the
obtrusive symptoms to the hidden unconscious fancies; herein, too, is
the fact, the communication of which will be put in the foreground of
this short preliminary publication.
Probably in view of the difficulties which prevent the effort of the
unconscious fancies from expressing themselves, the relation between the
fancies to the symptoms is not simple but rather manifoldly
complicated.[62] As a rule, that is, in a fully developed and a long
standing neurosis, a symptom does not correspond to an individual
unconscious fancy, but to a number of such, and indeed it is not
arbitrary but in lawful combination. To be sure in the beginning of the
disease all these complications are not developed.
For the sake of general interest I pass over the connection of this
communication and insert a series of formulæ which strive to
progressively exhaust the nature of hysteria. They do not contradict one
another but correspond partly to more complete and sharper conceptions,
and partly to the use of different points of view.
1. The hysterical symptom is the memory symbol of certain efficacious
(traumatic) impressions and experiences.
2. The hysterical symptom is the compensation by conversion for the
associative return of the traumatic experience.
3. The hysterical symptom—like all other psychic formations—is the
expression of a wish realization.
4. The hysterical symptom is the realization of an unconscious fancy
serving as a wish fulfilment.
5. The hysterical symptom serves as a sexual gratification, and
represents a part of the sexual life of the individual (corresponding to
one of the components of his sexual impulse).
6. The hysterical symptom, in a fashion, corresponds to the return of
the sexual gratification which was real in infantile life but had been
repressed since then.
7. The hysterical symptom results as a compromise between two opposing
affects or impulse incitements, one of which strives to bring to
realization a partial impulse, or a component of the sexual
constitution, while the other strives to suppress the same.
8. The hysterical symptom may undertake the representation of diverse
unconscious non-sexual incitements, but can not lack the sexual
significance.
It is the seventh among these determinations which expresses most
exhaustively the essence of the hysterical symptom as a realization of
an unconscious fancy, and it is the eighth which properly designates the
significance of the sexual moment. Some of the preceding formulæ are
contained as first steps in this formula.
In view of these relations between symptoms and fancies one can readily
reach from the psychoanalysis of the symptoms to the knowledge of the
components of the sexual impulse controlling the individual, just as I
have shown in the “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.” But in
some cases this examination gives rather unexpected results. It shows
that many symptoms can not be solved by one unconscious sexual fancy or
by a series of fancies in which the most significant and most primitive
is of a sexual nature, but in order to solve the symptom two sexual
fancies are required, one of the masculine and one of the feminine
character, so that one of these fancies arises from a homosexual
impulse. The axiom pronounced in formula seven is in no way effected by
this novelty, so that a hysterical symptom necessarily corresponds to a
compromise between a libidinous and a repressed emotion, but besides
that, it can correspond to a union of two libidinous fancies of contrary
sex characters.
I refrain from giving examples for this axiom. Experience has taught me
that short analyses compressed into the form of an abstract can never
make the demonstrable impression for which they were intended. The
communication of fully analyzed cases must be reserved for another
place.
I therefore content myself in formulating the axiom and in elucidating
its significance:
9. An hysterical symptom is the expression, on the one hand, of a
masculine, and on the other hand of a feminine unconscious sexual fancy.
I expressly observe that I am unable to adjudge to this axiom the
similar general validity that I claimed for the other formulæ. As far as
I can see it is met neither in all symptoms of a single case, nor in all
cases. On the contrary it is not difficult to find cases in which the
contrary sexual emotions have found separate symptomatic expression, so
that the symptoms of hetero- and homosexuality can be as sharply
distinguished from each other as the fancies hidden behind them.
Nevertheless, the relation claimed in the ninth formula occurs
frequently enough, and wherever it is found it is of sufficient
significance to merit a special formulation. It seems to me to signify
the highest stage of complexity to which the determination of hysterical
symptoms can reach, and can only be expected in a long standing neurosis
and where a great amount of organization has occurred.[63]
The demonstrable bisexual significance of hysterical symptoms occurring
in many cases is indeed an interesting proof for the assertion
formulated by me that the supposed bisexual predisposition of man can be
especially recognized in psychoneurotics by means of psychoanalysis.[64]
Quite an analogous process from the same sphere is that in which the
masturbator in his conscious fancies attempts to live through in his
imagination the fancied situations of both the man and the woman. Other
counterparts are found in certain hysterical crises in which the
patients play both rôles lying at the basis of sexual fancies; thus, for
example, one of the cases under my observation presses his garments to
his body with one arm (as woman), and with the other arm he attempts to
tear them off (as man). This contradictory simultaneity determines most
of the incomprehensibility of the situation otherwise so plastically
represented in the attack, and is excellently suited for the concealment
of the effective unconscious fancy.
In psychoanalytical treatment it is very important to be prepared for
the bisexual significance of a symptom. It should not be at all
surprising or misleading when a symptom remains apparently undiminished
in spite of the fact that one of its sexual determinants is already
solved. Perhaps it is still supported by the unsuspected contrary
sexual. Furthermore, during the treatment of such cases we can observe
how the patient makes use of this convenience. During the analysis of
the one sexual significance he continually switches his thoughts into
the sphere of the contrary significance just as if onto a neighboring
track.
-----
Footnote 1:
Studien über Hysterie von Jos. Breuer und Sigm. Freud. Leipzig und
Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1895. 2nd ed., 1909.
Footnote 2:
Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vols. I. and II. Leipzig
und Wien, Deuticke, 1906, and 1909.
Footnote 3:
Bleuler, Freudsche Mechanismen in der Symptomatologie der Psychosen,
Psychiatrisch-Neurolog. Wochenschrift, 1906, Nrs. 35 and 36.
Footnote 4:
Jung, The Psychology of Dementia Præcox, Nervous and Mental Disease
Monograph Series, Nr. 3.
Footnote 5:
Riklin, Psychiatrisch-Neurolog. Wochenschrift, 1905, Nr. 46.
Footnote 6:
Brill, Psychological Factors in Dementia Præcox, Journal of Abnormal
Psychology, Vol. III, Nr. 4, and A Case of Schizophrenia, American
Journal of Insanity, Vol. LXVI, No. 1.
Footnote 7:
Freud, Deuticke, 1909.
Footnote 8:
Freud, Karger, 1907.
Footnote 9:
Freud, Deuticke, 1905.
Footnote 10:
Written in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Breuer.
Footnote 11:
The possibility of such a therapy was clearly recognized by Delboeuf
and Binet, as is shown by the accompanying quotations: Delboeuf, Le
magnétisme animal, Paris, 1889: “On s’expliquerait des lors comment le
magnétiseur aide à guérison. Il remet le sujet dans l’état où le mal
s’est manifesté et combat par la parole le même mal, mais renaissant.”
(Binet, Les altérations de la personnalité, 1892, p. 243): “...
peut-être verra-t-on qu’en reportant le malade par un artifice mental,
au moment même ou le symptome a apparu pour la premiere fois, on rend
ce malade plus docile a une suggestion curative.” In the interesting
book of Janet, L’Automatism Psychologique, Paris, 1889, we find the
description of a cure brought about in a hysterical girl by a process
similar to our method.
Footnote 12:
We are unable to distinguish in this preliminary contribution what
there is new in this content and what can be found in such other
authors as Moebius and Strümpel who present similar views on hysteria.
The greatest similarity to our theoretical and therapeutical
accomplishments we accidentally found in some published observations
of Benedict which we shall discuss hereafter.
Footnote 13:
The German abreagiren has no exact English equivalent. It will
therefore be rendered throughout the text by “ab-react,” the literal
meaning is to react away from or to react off. It has different shades
of meaning, from defense reaction to emotional catharsis, which can be
discerned from the context.
Footnote 14:
As an example of the technique mentioned above, that is, of
investigating in a non-somnambulic state or where consciousness is not
broadened, I will relate a case which I analyzed recently. I treated a
woman of thirty-eight who suffered from an anxiety neurosis
(agoraphobia, fear of death, etc.). Like many patients of that type
she had a disinclination to admit that she acquired this disease in
her married state and was quite desirous of referring it back to early
youth. She informed me that at the age of seventeen when she was in
the street of her small city she had the first attack of vertigo,
anxiety, and faintness, and that these attacks recurred at times up to
a few years ago when they were replaced by her present disease. I
thought that the first attacks of vertigo, in which the anxiety was
only blurred, were hysterical and decided to analyze the same. All she
knows is that she had the first attack when she went out to make
purchases in the main street of her city.—“What purchases did you wish
to make?”—“Various things, I believe it was for a ball to which I was
invited.”—“When was the ball to take place?”—“I believe two days
later.”—“Something must have happened a few days before this which
excited you, and which made an impression on you.”—“But I don’t know,
it is now twenty-one years.”—“That does not matter, you will recall
it. I will exert some pressure on your head and when I stop it you
will either think of or see something which I want you to tell me.” I
went through this procedure, but she remained quiet.—“Well, has
nothing come into your mind?”—“I thought of something, but that can
have no connection with it.”—“Just say it.”—“I thought of a young girl
who is dead, but she died when I was eighteen, that is, a year
later.”—“Let us adhere to this. What was the matter with your
friend?”—“Her death affected me very much, because I was very friendly
with her. A few weeks before another young girl died, which attracted
a great deal of attention in our city, but then I was only seventeen
years old.”—“You see, I told you that the thought obtained under the
pressure of the hands can be relied upon. Well now, can you recall the
thought that you had when you became dizzy in the street?”—“There was
no thought, it was vertigo.”—“That is quite impossible, such
conditions are never without accompanying ideas. I will press your
head again and you will think of it. Well, what came to your mind?”—“I
thought, ‘now I am the third.’”—“What do you mean?”—“When I became
dizzy I must have thought, now I will die like the other two.”—“That
was then the idea, during the attack you thought of your friend, her
death must have made a great impression on you.”—“Yes, indeed, I
recall now that I felt dreadful when I heard of her death, to think
that I should go to a ball while she lay dead, but I anticipated so
much pleasure at the ball and was so occupied with the invitation that
I did not wish to think of this sad event.” (Notice here the
intentional repression from consciousness which caused the
reminiscences of her friend to become pathogenic.)
The attack was now in a measure explained, but I still needed the
occasional moment which just then provoked this recollection, and
accidentally I formed a happy supposition about it.—“Can you recall
through which street you passed at that time?”—“Surely, the main
street with its old houses, I can see it now.”—“And where did your
friend live?”—“In the same street. I had just passed her house and was
two houses farther when I was seized with the attack.”—“Then it was
the house which you passed that recalled your dead friend, and the
contrast which you then did not wish to think about that again took
possession of you.”
Still I was not satisfied, perhaps there was something else which
provoked or strengthened the hysterical disposition in a hitherto
normal girl. My suppositions were directed to the menstrual
indisposition as an appropriate moment, and I asked, “Do you know when
during that month you had your menses?”—She became indignant: “Do you
expect me to know that? I only know that I had them then very rarely
and irregularly. When I was seventeen I only had them once.”—“Well let
us enumerate the days, months, etc., so as to find when it
occurred.”—She with certainty decided on a month and wavered between
two days preceding a date which accompanied a fixed holiday.—Does that
in any way correspond with the time of the ball?—She answered quietly:
“The ball was on this holiday. And now I recall that I was impressed
by the fact that the only menses which I had had during the year
occurred just when I had to go to the ball. It was the first
invitation to a ball that I had received.”
The combination of the events can now be readily constructed and the
mechanism of this hysterical attack readily viewed. To be sure the
result was gained after painstaking labor. It necessitated on my side
full confidence in the technique and individual directing ideas in
order to reawaken such details of forgotten experiences after
twenty-one years in a sceptical and awakened patient. But then
everything agreed.
Footnote 15:
A better description of this peculiar state in which one knows
something and at the same time does not know it, I could never obtain.
It can apparently be understood only if one has found himself in such
a state. I have at my disposal a very striking recollection of this
kind which I can vividly see. If I make the effort to recall what
passed through my mind at that time my output seems very poor. I saw
at that time something which was not at all appropriate to my
expectations, and what I saw did not in the least divert me from my
definite purpose, whereas this perception ought to have done away with
my purpose. I did not become conscious of this contradiction nor did I
remark the affect of the repulsion to which it was undoubtedly due
that this perception did not attain any psychic validity. I was struck
with that form of blindness in seeing eyes, which one admires so much
in mothers towards their daughters, in husbands towards their wives,
and in rulers towards their favorites.
Footnote 16:
It will be shown that, notwithstanding, I erred.
Footnote 17:
Die Abwehr-Neuropsychosen, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1 June, 1894.
Footnote 18:
I can neither exclude nor prove that this pain, especially of the
thighs, was of a neurasthenic nature.
Footnote 19:
To my surprise I once discovered that such subsequent
ab-reaction—through other impressions than nursing—may form the
content of an otherwise enigmatic neurosis. It was the case of a
pretty girl of nineteen, Miss Matilda H. whom I first saw with an
incomplete paralysis of the legs, and months afterward I was again
called because her character had changed. She was depressed and tired
of living, entertaining lack of consideration for her mother, and was
irritable and inapproachable. The whole picture of the patient did not
seem to me to be that of an ordinary melancholia. She could easily be
put into a somnambulic state, and I made use of this peculiarity to
impart to her each time commands and suggestions to which she listened
in her profound sleep and responded with profuse tears, but which,
however, caused but little change in her condition. One day while
hypnotized she became talkative and informed me that the reason for
her depression was the breaking of her betrothal many months before.
She stated that on closer acquaintance with her fiance the things
displeasing to her and her mother became more and more evident. On the
other hand, the material advantages of the engagement were too
tangible to make the decision of a rupture easy, thus, both of them
hesitated for a long time. She then merged into a condition of
indecision in which she allowed everything to pass apathetically, and
finally her mother pronounced for her the decisive “no.” Shortly
after, she awoke as from a dream and began to occupy herself fervently
with the thoughts about the broken betrothal, she began to weigh the
pros and cons, a process which she continued for some time. At present
she continues to live in that time of doubt, and entertains daily the
moods and the thoughts which would have been appropriate for that day.
The irritability against her mother could only be explained if we took
into consideration the circumstances that existed on that decisive
day. Next to this thought activity she found her present life a mere
phantom just like a dream. I did not again succeed in getting the girl
to talk—I continued my exhortations during deep somnambulism. I saw
her each time burst into tears without however receiving any answer
from her. But one day, it was near the anniversary of the engagement,
the whole state of depression disappeared. This was attributed to my
great hypnotic cure.
Footnote 20:
It is different in a hypnoid-hysteria. Here the content of the
separate psychic groups may never have been in the ego consciousness.
Footnote 21:
I had under my observation another case in which a contracture of the
masseters made it impossible for the artist to sing. The young lady in
question through painful experiences in the family was forced to go on
the stage. While in Rome rehearsing, in great excitement she suddenly
perceived the sensation of being unable to close her opened mouth and
sank fainting to the floor. The physician who was called closed her
jaws forcibly, but the patient since that time was unable to open her
jaws more than a finger’s breadth and had to give up her newly chosen
profession. When she came under my care many years later, the motives
for that excitement were apparently over for some time, for massage in
a light hypnosis sufficed to open her mouth widely. The lady has since
sung in public.
Footnote 22:
But perhaps spinal neurasthenic?
Footnote 23:
See Studien über Hysterie, p. 57, footnote.
Footnote 24:
l. c.
Footnote 25:
The literal translation of Auftreten is to press down by treading.
Footnote 26:
In conditions of profounder psychic changes we apparently find a
symbolic stamp (mark) of the more artificial usage of language in the
form of emblematic pictures and sensations. There was a time in Mrs.
Cäcilie M. during which every thought was changed into an
hallucination, and which solution frequently afforded great humor. She
at that time complained to me of being troubled by the hallucination
that both her physicians, Breuer and I, were hanged in the garden on
two nearby trees. The hallucination disappeared after the analysis
revealed the following origin: The evening before Breuer refused her
request for a certain drug. She then placed her hopes on me but found
me just as inflexible. She was angry at both of us, and in her affect
she thought, “They are worthy of each other, the one is a pendant of
the other!”
Footnote 27:
E. Hecker, Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, Dec., 1893.
Footnote 28:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und
Wien, 1895, p. 15.
Footnote 29:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und
Wien, 1895, p. 106.
Footnote 30:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und
Wien, 1895, p. 15.
Footnote 31:
As mentioned in the preface the author has long since discarded this
pressure procedure.—Translator’s note.
Footnote 32:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und
Wien, 1895, p. 85.
Footnote 33:
l. c., p. 15.
Footnote 34:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Wien und
Leipzig, 1895, p. 28.
Footnote 35:
See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und
Wien, 1895, p. 55.
Footnote 36:
État mental des hystériques, Paris, 1893 and 1894. Quelques
définitions récentes de l’hystérie, Arch. de Neurol., 1893, XXXV-VI.
Footnote 37:
Oppenheim: Hysteria is an exaggerated expression of emotion. But the
“expression of emotion” represents that amount of psychic excitement
which normally experiences conversion.
Footnote 38:
Strümpel: The disturbance of hysteria lies in the psycho-physical,
there where the physical and psychical are connected with each other.
Footnote 39:
Janet, in the second chapter of his spirited essay “Quelques
definitions,” etc., has treated the objection that the splitting of
consciousness belongs also to the psychoses and the so called
psychaesthenia, but in my opinion he has not satisfactorily solved it.
It is essentially this objection which urged him to call hysteria a
form of degeneration. But through no characteristic is he able to
separate sufficiently the hysterical splitting of consciousness from
the psychopathic, etc.
Footnote 40:
The group of typical phobias, for which agoraphobia is a prototype,
cannot be reduced to the psychic mechanisms here developed.
Furthermore the mechanism of agoraphobia deviates in one decisive
point from that of the real obsessions and from phobias based on such.
Here there is no repressed idea from which the affect of fear has been
separated. The fear of this phobia has another origin.
Footnote 41:
E. Hecker, Über larvierte und abortive Angstzustände bei Neurasthenie,
Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, December, 1893.—Anxiety is made
particularly prominent among the chief symptoms of neurasthenia by
Kaan, Der neurasthenische Angstaffekt bei Zwangsvorstellungen und der
primordiale Grübelzwang, Wien, 1893.
Footnote 42:
Die Abwehr-Neuropsychosen, Neurol. Centralbl., 1894, Nr. 10 u. 11.
Footnote 43:
Obsession et phobies, Révue neurologique, 1895.
Footnote 44:
Moebius, Neuropathologische Beiträge, 1894, 2. Heft.
Footnote 45:
Peyer, Die nervösen Affektionen des Darmes, Wiener Klinik, Jänner,
1893.
Footnote 46:
Freud, Abwehr-Neuropsychosen.
Footnote 47:
Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, Nr. 10.
Footnote 48:
I myself surmise that the so frequently fabricated assaults of
hysterical persons are obsessional confabulations emanating from the
memory traces of infantile traumas.
Footnote 49:
In an article on the anxiety neurosis (Neurologisches Centralblatt,
1895, Nr. 2) I stated that “an anxiety neurosis which can almost
typically be combined with hysteria can be evoked in maturing girls at
the first encounter with the sexual problem.” I know today that the
occasion in which such virginal anxiety breaks out does not really
correspond to the first encounter with sexuality, but that in such
persons there was in childhood a precedent experience of sexual
passivity which memory was awakened at the “first encounter.”
Footnote 50:
A psychological theory of the repression ought also to inform us why
only ideas of a sexual content can be repressed. It may be formulated
as follows: It is known that ideas of a sexual content produce
exciting processes in the genitals resembling the actual sexual
experience. It may be assumed that this somatic excitement becomes
transformed into psychic. As a rule the activity referred to is much
stronger at the time of the occurrence than at the recollection of the
same. But if the sexual experience takes place during the time of
sexual immaturity and the recollection of the same is awakened during
or after maturity, the recollection then acts disproportionately more
exciting than the previous experience, for puberty has in the mean
time incomparably increased the reactive capacity of the sexual
apparatus. But such an inverse proportion seems to contain the
psychological determination of repression. Through the retardation of
the pubescent maturity in comparison with the psychic function, the
sexual life offers the only existing possibility for that inversion of
the relative efficacy. The infantile traumas subsequently act like
fresh experiences, but they are then unconscious. Deeper psychological
discussions I will have to postpone for another time. I moreover call
attention to the fact that the here considered time of “sexual
maturity” does not coincide with puberty, but occurs before the same
(eight to ten years).
Footnote 51:
One example instead of many: An eleven-year-old boy has obsessively
arranged for himself the following ceremonial before going to bed: He
could not fall asleep unless he related to his mother most minutely
all experiences of the day; not the smallest scrap of paper or any
other rubbish was allowed in the evening on the carpet of his bedroom.
The bed had to be moved close to the wall, three chairs had to stand
in front of it, and the pillows had to lie in just such a position. In
order to fall asleep he had to kick with both legs a number of times,
and then had to lie on the side. This was explained as follows: Years
before while putting this pretty boy to sleep, the servant girl made
use of this opportunity to lay over him and assault him sexually. When
this reminiscence was later awakened by a recent experience it made
itself known to consciousness by the compulsion in the above mentioned
ceremonial which sense could really be surmised and the details
verified by psychoanalysis. The chairs before the bed which was close
to the wall—so that no one could have access to it; the arrangement of
the pillows in a definite manner—so that they should be differently
arranged than they were on that evening; the motion with the legs—to
kick away the person lying on him; sleeping on the side—because during
that scene he lay on his back; the detailed confession to his
mother—because in consequence of the prohibition of his seductress he
concealed from his mother this and other sexual experiences; finally,
keeping the floor of his bedroom clean—because this was the main
reproach which he had to hear from his mother up to that time.
Footnote 52:
When the meagre success of this treatment was later removed by an
exacerbation, she did not again see the offensive pictures of strange
genitals, but she had the idea that strangers saw her genitals as soon
as they were behind her.
Footnote 53:
Lecture delivered before the Vienna Medic. Doktorenkollegium, on
December 12, 1904.
Footnote 54:
From Löwenfeld, “Sexualleben und Nervenleiden,” IV ed., 1906.
Footnote 55:
See Chapter VII, and Zur Aetiologie der Hysterie, Wiener, Klinische
Rundschau, 1896.
Footnote 56:
An English translation in preparation.
Footnote 57:
Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, herausgegeben von Hirschfeld, I,
1908.
Footnote 58:
Compare Breuer and Freud Studien über Hysterie, 1895. P. Janet,
Névroses et ideés fixes, I (Les rêveries subconscientes), 1898.
Havelock Ellis, Sexual Impulse and Modesty (German by Kötscher), 1900.
Freud, Traumdeutung, 1906, 2d ed., 1909. A. Pick, Über pathologische
Träumerei und ihre Beziehungen zur Hysteria, Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie
und Neurologie, XIV, 1896.
Footnote 59:
H. Ellis similarly expresses himself, l. c., p. 185.
Footnote 60:
Compare Freud, Traumdeutung, 2d ed., p. 302.
Footnote 61:
Compare Freud, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, 1895.
Footnote 62:
The same thing holds true for the relation between the “latent”
thoughts of the dream and the elements of the manifest content of the
dream. See the Chapter on the “Work of the Dream” in the author’s
Traumdeutung.
Footnote 63:
Indeed J. Sadger, who recently discovered this sentence in question,
independently by psychoanalysis, claims for it a general validity (Die
Bedeutung der psychoanalytische Methode nach Freud, Centralbl. f.
Nerv. u. Psych., Nr. 229.)
Footnote 64:
Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
10 the so called χατ’ εξοχὴν of the so called κατ’ ἐξοχὴν of
traumatic hysteria or of a traumatic hysteria or of a
series of series of
65 scenes like the one of being scenes like the one of being
forced to hold our her hand in forced to hold out her hand in
123 be identified with personel or be identified with personal or
hereditary “degeneration.” hereditary “degeneration.”
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.