[10]. Written in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Breuer.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[16]. It will be shown that, notwithstanding, I erred.