When our patient was a student he learnt to know and love a girl-student. Together they made many excursions in the environs of the town, but his exceeding timidity and bashfulness (the lot of the stammerer) never permitted him an opportunity of getting out the appropriate words. Moreover, he was poor and had nothing to offer her but hopes. The time came for the termination of his studies; she went away, and he also, and they never saw one another again. And not long afterwards he heard she had married some one else. Then he relinquished his hopes, but he did not know that Eros never emancipates his slaves.
He buried himself in abstract learning, not to forget, but to work for her in his thoughts. He wanted to keep the love in his heart quite secret, and never to betray that secret. He would dedicate his works to her without her ever knowing it. The compromise succeeded, but not for long. Once he travelled through the town where he heard she lived—it seems to have been an accident that he travelled through that town. He did not leave the train, which only made a short halt there. From the window he saw standing in the distance a young woman with a little child, and thought it was she. Impossible to say whether it was really so or not. He does not think he felt any peculiar feeling at that moment; anyway he gave himself no trouble to ascertain whether it was she, which makes the presumption strong that it was not really she. The unconscious wanted to be left in peace with its illusion. Shortly afterwards he again came to B——, the place of old memories. Then he felt something strange stir in his soul, an uneasy feeling, akin to Nietzsche's—
"Not for long shalt thou thirst, O burning heart!
There is promise in the air,
Winds come to me from unknown mouths—
The healing coolness comes."
Civilised man no longer believes in demons, he calls in the doctor. Our patient wanted to be hypnotised. Then madness overcame him. What was going on in him?
He answered this question in broken sentences, with long pauses, in that twilight-stage that heralds convalescence. I give as faithfully as may be his own words. When he fell ill he suddenly lost the well-regulated world and found himself in the chaos of an overmastering dream, a sea of blood and fire; the world was out of joint; everywhere conflagration, volcanic outbreaks, earthquakes, mountains fell in, followed by enormous battles where the peoples fell upon one another; he became involved more and more in the battle of nature, he was right in the midst of those fighting, wrestling, defending himself, enduring unutterable misery and pain; gradually he was exalted and strengthened by a strange calming feeling that some one was watching his struggles, that his loved one saw all from afar. That was the time when he showed real violence to the attendants. He felt his strength increasing and saw himself at the head of great armies which he would lead to victory. Then more great battles and at length victory. He would try to get his loved one as prize of victory. As he drew near her the illness ceased, and he awoke from a long dream.
His daily life again began to follow the regular routine. He shut himself up in his work and forgot the abyss within himself. A few years later he is again at B—— Demon or Destiny? Again he followed the old trail and again was overborne by old memories. But this time he was not immersed in the depths of confusion. He remained orientated and en rapport with his surroundings. The struggle was considerably milder, but he did gymnastics, practised the arts, and made good his deficiencies; then followed the dreamy stage with the love-songs, corresponding to the period of victory in the first psychosis. In this state, according to his own words, he had a dreamlike feeling as if he stood upon the borders of two worlds and knew not whether truth stood on the right or on the left. He told me, "It is said she is married, but I believe she is not, but is still waiting for me; I feel that it must be so. It is ever to me as if she were not married, and as if success were yet attainable."
Our patient here portrayed but a pale copy of the scene in the first attack of psychosis, when he, the victor, stood before his mistress. In the course of a few weeks after this conversation the scientific interests of the patient again began to predominate. He spoke with obvious unwillingness about his intimate life, he repressed it more and more, and finally turned away from it as if it did not belong to himself. Thus gradually the gate of the under-world became closed. There remained nothing but a certain tense expression, and a look which, though fixed on the outer world, was turned inwards at the same time; and this alone hinted at the silent activity of the unconscious, preparing new solutions for his insoluble problem. This is the so-called cure in dementia præcox.