Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses

by Sándor Ferenczi; Karl Abraham; Sigmund Freud; Ernest Jones; Ernst Simmel

The first part of our mental analytic therapy is to recognise the meaning of the neurotic healing tendency, the second, to convey our knowledge to the patient. The crowning point of our treatment consists in securing the spontaneous cooperation of the neurotic who, freed of his emotional inhibition, and now in harmony with himself, has, through his wider mental field of vision, a greater scope for the activity of his will power. Man can only desire what he knows. By reason of this the analyst comes to realise that the diagnosis, “mala voluntas”, which so often brings the doctor who is untrained in analysis into conflict with his patient, mostly betokens a “mala potentia” of the doctor who knows nothing about the functions of the unconscious.

The weakening of the personality complexes of the soldier, as just described, his subjection to other ideas with accentuated feelings which are held down in the subconscious and thus connected with the constant readiness to subordination under the strivings of ego-hostile feelings, represents the so-called morbid suggestibility. To make use of this suggestibility for curative purposes without exposing its foundations is to increase the illness instead of bringing about a cure.

The neurotic, in my opinion, succumbs in the first instance to auto-suggestion, that is to say, to over-strong emotionally toned ideas which have arisen in him at a time when the ego-complex is weakened in power or completely suspended.

According to my observations, narrowings and suppressions of consciousness represent the initial stages of the war neuroses. In the smallest loss of consciousness, the shock effects of terror, up to the severe fainting attacks and the long continued loss of consciousness after being buried, we see the self-conscious of the personality more or less obliterated and the way opened to the unconscious. Here undoubtedly at the commencement are operating those teleological mechanisms which constitute the foundation of the neuroses and their formation of symptoms. Consciousness refuses to take up ideas or to assimilate at the moment those things which are too horrible in their reality to be consciously tolerated. Therefore those psychic shocks, those fainting attacks and profound loss of consciousness denote, provided there is no injury in cerebro, a power of the unconscious that attracts to itself the entire psychosis in a salutary manner.

Hypnosis gives us a clear picture of these processes. It shows us the patient in the same state of consciousness as that in which during the war he had acquired the origin of the illness. During hypnosis the soldier relates, or once again lives through, all the things that he had experienced in former circumstances only unconsciously. We learn of distressing pains of which, when he was buried, he never became conscious. In such a hypnosis we see his anxiety displayed, his anger arise, feelings which at the moment of the excitation were benumbed and like lightning were dragged violently into the unconscious.

I can best illustrate what I have said by a few examples. For instance, the simplest cases, which occurred so often, of a flaccid paralysis of the arm after a slight gunshot wound that had been well healed for a long time and which seemed to be of a purely physical nature, showed its unconscious connections very quickly in one sitting. Consciousness only knows, “I cannot move my arm”, and no amount of reasoning was of any avail. However, the unconscious spoke during hypnosis: “In the excitement of the attack my mind became a blank. When I was hit the impact of the shrapnel was so great that my arm felt as though it was pulled violently backwards, and I immediately thought it was torn off”. The correction of the unconscious idea in hypnosis which again united the idea of the torn off arm with consciousness here quickly settled the question of an organic basis of the symptom, It can be easily understood that an arm which is no longer recognised as existing is also completely analgesic.

The neurotic symptoms which owe their origin to such suddenly occurring events we can consequently regard in their effects as realised post-hypnotic auto-suggestions. I have confirmed this view by numerous examples, I might mention the case of a soldier who suffered from a severe facial tic by which he was constantly making a grimace, and who at the same time had a contracture of the right knee joint, both of which symptoms had proved quite refractory to the usual treatment by suggestion. Hypnosis, which restored the conscious situation of the initial blowing up, very soon yielded the following information. While the patient lay unconscious under a wreckage of stones and while scenes of his native place appeared to him as in a dream, he was constantly compelled to make grimaces in order to remove the mass of sand which lay on his face and also for the purpose of breathing freely. At the same time a sharp stone was pressing on his right heel which compelled him to keep his leg bent. This compulsion which was united with unconscious ideas acted therefore as a post-hypnotic suggestion for more than a year afterwards, until at last the command which the unconscious had imposed on the patient could be annulled during hypnosis by means of my correction. In this way was the removal of these symptoms brought about. I could quote further similar examples in which these kinds of contractures represent a compulsory holding of a part in a position of ease which is based on unconscious sensations of pain.

Apart from repressed physical sensations of pain the affects themselves also naturally play an important part in the neurotic compulsion to maintain a particular position, I remember a soldier who for several months had a compulsion to keep both eyes fixed and turned upwards and to the left. This symptom failed to react to methods of suggestion. Analysis under hypnosis within a few minutes gave the explanation and at the same time the removal of the symptom. The patient had anxiously expected the falling down of trunks of trees from above and to the left through the bursting of shells during a drum fire. His eyes became fixed in dread before the fate threatening him. The original situation had in the meantime become unreal, nevertheless the anxiety in itself was valid. The patient was still a soldier and retained in his neurosis the anxiety—an anxiety of similar situations. The neurosis of another soldier, which for a long time had been considered of an organic nature, a bulbar paralysis being suspected, was very instructive and the success of the treatment most gratifying. This man in addition to an apparently harmless superficial gunshot wound of the back suffered from a spasm of the muscles of the throat, a dysphagia, that made it impossible for him to take solid food, while liquid food was only possible in small quantities. The spasm of the throat and muscles of mastication turned out to be “suppressed rage”. This soldier who was cut off when on patrol was stealing alone through a wood when he saw a comrade being ill-treated by Frenchmen on the main road. This scene he reproduced fully and dramatically under hypnosis in which he stealthily crawled about, ground his teeth together and gnashed them in impotent rage over the scene which he had witnessed. At that time he was struck in the back by a chance shot which caused him to faint for a short time. He then succeeded in getting back to his company and was sent into hospital on account of his superficial wound. The living through this scene again with its accompanying emotions completely freed him from his dysphagia. This example also shows how repressed rage manifests itself as a more positive feeling tone through physical increase of tonus in contrast to the previously described cases with negative and depressed accentuation of feelings which are physically represented by a lowering of tone and in flaccid paralyses. Here an opportunity may be taken of alluding to the fact that one can demonstrate without difficulty during hypnosis the displacement from the psychical into the physical. If we interrupt the patient in the abreaction of his rage during hypnosis then he reacts with a general tremor or the tremor of an extremity which is already in some way psychically affected.

Further I might mention the case of a neurotic who suffered from a shaking tremor of the right arm with peculiar circular movements of the thumb and fore-finger. This tremor had been removed by pure suggestive methods, but one morning it returned, as the patient expressed it “by itself”. On closer questioning he remembered that the shaking had re-appeared in conjunction with a terrifying dream during the previous night; the actual content of the dream he had forgotten. During hypnosis the patient immediately became conscious again of the dream, and by means of it of those events which still compelled him to shake his arm. During the night he had dreamed of a Russian with a black beard who sprang on to his bed in order to strangle him. He awoke in anxiety and terror with his arm shaking. The patient had seen the face of this Russian appear over the parapet during a furious hand grenade fight just when he was on the point of fixing a grenade fuse and was suddenly blown over. He lost consciousness with his rage undischarged and an incipient movement which served as a mimic abreaction of this anger.