After menstruation began the staring spells became grouped and came only during her periods. But they were more numerous. She would have a number in one day. They were not yet sufficiently observable to be noticed. At about this time she had a terrible fright. She was kneeling at her mother's side listening to a story when she thought she saw a woman's face looking at her over her mother's shoulder. She was speechless with terror. This was not noticed and she did not tell. Around this time too she had another fright. She was studying one evening at the dining-room table when she saw a face looking in at the window. She screamed, and kept on screaming, but finally was able to tell that she had seen someone looking in at the window. Her father took her out and showed that it couldn't be so because there were no tracks in the snow which was on the ground. She wouldn't or couldn't stop crying, however, and kept it up all night, she said. Just before menstruation she did some sleep-walking. She got up one night and went to her mother and said she had something to tell her. Her mother tried to get her to say what it was but could not, and saw that her daughter was asleep. She kept saying, "you know what it is." The mother did not dare to waken her and finally got her quietly back into bed. The next morning she remembered nothing of what had happened.
When the patient was about sixteen she married. Her husband did not want any children and practiced coitus interruptus, but she became pregnant nevertheless and had an abortion performed. Although c.i. continued to be practiced she became pregnant again and this time she had a daughter. Four more years of c. i. followed. During all this time the patient had the staring spells, but they were never noticed and she never told, not even her mother. Then, like a thunder bolt out of a clear sky, came a tragedy.
She was pregnant again, and visiting her mother, expecting her husband for over Sunday, when she received a letter saying he had left her and had gone off with another woman. When she read the letter she lost consciousness.
Then followed a terrible time. In hate of her husband and on account of fear lest she be unable to care for her baby she had another abortion performed. This time she nearly died through not having proper medical attendance afterwards, but she finally recovered and lived a life of feverish activity and hate.
During her marriage she had been entirely frigid with respect to the sexual act. A friend told her she had been missing an essential experience of marriage. About a year after her husband left her she met a man who thrilled her through and through, and thought, "this is what my friend meant." This man showed her some attention and she set out consciously to seduce him. She soon succeeded and though he was wildly in love with her and wanted to marry her, she steadfastly refused on the score of not loving him, but was his mistress for two or three years. During this time her staring spells seem to have been at a minimum, but I cannot assert that they disappeared.
Then she met the man who became her second husband. She had refused to marry her lover because she did not "love" him. She now dropped him completely, and getting a divorce from her husband on the ground of desertion, married.
She was happy about a year and a half when her husband moved to a country cross-road near a "hotel" (bar-room). Here he began drinking badly, and consorting with prostitutes. For three years she fought her husband off, in fear of infection. During this time she had no intercourse. At this time began the attacks of unconsciousness. She was alone one night, while her husband was off carousing, when she had a terrible fright on seeing a man trying to get in at the window. This was probably hallucinatory as nothing came of it. But from this time forth she was subject to attacks, in which she lost consciousness, had convulsions, frothed at the mouth, and bit her tongue badly.
At the end of about three years, however, her patience broke, and she told her husband that if he did not stop she should leave him. This threat brought him to his senses apparently, and he completely reformed. But her love for him was dead. And though she now permitted marital relations to be resumed, she remained from this time on absolutely frigid. Her husband too, now suffered from premature ejaculation. Thus from the point of view both of "passion" and of "love" the patient was not satisfied. Her attacks increased in number and violence, coming now at any time, not being confined to the menstrual period as at first, and coming days as well as nights.
In this patient we have represented the points of view both of Stekel and of Clark. The patient showed conclusively her capacity for criminal action. She also illustrates the craving for a return to the mother. The morning of the day on which she had the first attack in which she bit her tongue, she passed through the town where her mother was living and thought, "Oh, if I could only go to my mother." But remembering she had promised her lawyer to live a year with her husband, she went on. Of the sexual character of her conflicts no further comment is necessary.
Here then we have the natural history of what? Hysteria? or Epilepsy? This question I shall not attempt to answer. But what has been the therapeutic result of psychoanalysis? This question I can answer.