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.