The cries that sometimes initiated and accompanied the convulsions at first, afterwards became sufficiently articulate to be understood as calls "Mama, Mama, Mama."
It was found that when her father would chase her about the house, in drunken fury, she would call for her mother in frantic fear. Here, apparently, is a meaning of the call preceding the convulsions.
Under a very short psychoanalytic treatment the patient showed marked improvement. Her attacks became much less violent and much farther apart. She became able to control them to a great extent. Finally she became so well that one might say she had practically recovered.
Apparently there is no hint here of a repressed criminal complex. But a little deeper analysis suggests it, however. The first attack, which was in the form of a faint, occurred under the following circumstances. The patient was at the funeral of the father of her best girl friend. As she looked at the dead body of her friend's father the thought flashed through her mind, "He was so good, and now he is dead, while my father who is so bad, still lives. I wish he were dead." Shortly after she fainted.
There were a number of reasons, seemingly adequate, for incomplete success in this case. In the first place, the patient had been in this country only a few years and spoke very broken English. She is a Russian Jew. Obviously this was a very great barrier to understanding. In the next place it was almost impossible to change conditions of home, although Social Service worked wonders in this case. The father continued to get drunk, and one of the last of her now infrequent attacks occurred on his return from jail. The patient was dreadfully afraid lest her father find out that the knowledge of his delinquency had been discovered through her.
Not the least of the reasons militating against complete success was the short time possible for psychoanalytic treatment. The patient was seen only three weeks. As the time needed for a psychoanalysis is variable depending on the particular patient, it is clear that this would be too short a time to enable a young girl, only recently here from Russia, to understand, or to overcome resistances. That the treatment was as nearly successful as it was is perhaps encouraging to the hope that suitable cases under favorable conditions might be cured.
The next case is one where the diagnosis lay between hysteria and epilepsy. The symptoms were as follows: The patient had attacks in which she became unconscious, gasped, and spittle ran from her mouth. She also bit her tongue. She becomes stiff, eyes stark, and is left tired and weak. These attacks were first noticed about five years ago. Since then she has had about five similar attacks, the last three coming within five months. The last two were within a day of each other and frightened her so she came to the hospital. At the age of eight or nine she said that she had flashes of speechlessness, and a thought which she cannot define, as of a horse or a man. She never became unconscious or bit her tongue. After her first catamenial these flashes of speechlessness and thought came only at this time. At the age of two the patient said that she had fallen down stairs and hit her head. She said she was unconscious twenty-four hours.
As a result of a psychoanalysis the following facts were learned. The patient was a very sensitive child, exceedingly responsive to her environment. She was also stubborn and self-willed, at times. She was reserved and capable of great repression. When she was about three or four she remembers seeing in the Bible a picture of the Devil on a white horse. This used to make her shudder, but it also had a sort of irresistible fascination. Later, when she was seven or eight, it would come into her mind in school even and make her feel so badly she would lay her head on her arms. But she never told anybody what it was that troubled her and she would put it out of her mind. She thoroughly believed her mother when she told her that the Devil would come and get her if she did wrong.
At about the age of ten or eleven she began going with a girl much older than herself. She used to visit this girl and spend the night with her, and in turn have her at her own home. In this way they spent the night together quite frequently. Soon the girl wanted to masturbate her and although she repelled her advances at first she finally allowed it because she was told she would be regarded as queer if she didn't as other girls did it and liked it. She, however, never did get any pleasure out of the practice, and remained perfectly passive. She thought if her friend enjoyed it and it didn't hurt her she should let her have her pleasure. She never told of this.
The patient now began having what she called staring spells. These never lasted more than a second or so and they were never observed. She carefully concealed them. Just before the patient began to menstruate which was when she was about fourteen, she noticed that the day after she had been with the girl who masturbated her she had a terrific headache. Then she remembered that for a long time it had been so though she had never connected the headaches before with the masturbation. She stopped the practice immediately and never allowed it to be resumed.