[17]. Die Abwehr-Neuropsychosen, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1 June, 1894.
[18]. I can neither exclude nor prove that this pain, especially of the thighs, was of a neurasthenic nature.
[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.
[20]. It is different in a hypnoid-hysteria. Here the content of the separate psychic groups may never have been in the ego consciousness.
[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.
[22]. But perhaps spinal neurasthenic?
[23]. See Studien über Hysterie, p. 57, footnote.
[24]. l. c.
[25]. The literal translation of Auftreten is to press down by treading.
[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!”