Studies in Hysteria by Sigmund Freud

Author:Sigmund Freud [Freud, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health; Fitness & Dieting, Psychology & Counseling, History, Neuropsychology, Pathologies, Psychoanalysis, Medical Books, Psychology, Politics & Social Sciences, Philosophy, Consciousness & Thought, Classics
ISBN: 0141184825
Amazon: B00DZI1QQG
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2004-06-29T05:00:00+00:00

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

I have not always been a psychotherapist but was trained, like other neuropathologists, to use local diagnosis and electro-prognosis, and I myself still find it strange that the case histories that I write read like novellas and lack, so to speak, the serious stamp of science. I have to console myself with the thought that the nature of the object rather than my own personal preference is clearly responsible for this; local diagnosis and electrical reactions are simply not effective in the study of hysteria, whereas an in-depth portrayal of the workings of the inner life, such as one expects to be given by novelists and poets, together with the application of a few psychological formulas, does allow me to gain a kind of insight into the course of a hysteria. Case histories such as these demand to be judged as psychiatric, but they have one advantage over the latter, namely the intimate relationship between the story of the patient’s suffering and the symptoms of their illness, a relationship that we still seek in vain in the biographies of other psychoses.

I have endeavoured to weave the explanations that I can give regarding the case of Fräulein Elisabeth v. R. into my description of the history of her cure, but the essential points do perhaps bear recapitulating in context at this stage. I have portrayed the patient’s character – the traits that recur in a great many hysterics and really cannot be put down to degeneracy: her gifted nature; her ambition; her moral sensitivity; her excessive need for love, which was, to begin with, satisfied by her family; the independence of her nature that went beyond the feminine ideal and was expressed in a good deal of stubbornness, pugnacity and reserve. According to my colleague’s reports there was no evidence of any significant hereditary illness in either family; it is true that her mother suffered for many years from a neurotic depression that did not receive close examination, but her mother’s brothers and sisters, her own father and his family could be counted as well-balanced people, free of any nervous complaint. There had been no severe case of neuropsychosis in the near family.

This, the patient’s nature, was then affected by painful emotions, the first of which was the debilitating influence of a long period of nursing her beloved father.

There are good reasons why nursing should play such a significant role in the prehistory of hysterias. Indeed, there is clear evidence of a series of factors that are operative in this: disturbance of one’s physical state by interrupted sleep, neglect of one’s physical well-being, and the repercussions of continually gnawing anxiety on the vegetative functions. But in my estimation what is most important lies elsewhere. Anyone whose mind is occupied by the hundred and one tasks of nursing that follow each other interminably over weeks and months will, on the one hand, become accustomed to suppressing every sign of his own emotional involvement and, on the other, find that he is

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