This is the least serious case. The obstacle can readily be overcome by discussion and explanation, although the sensitiveness and the suspicion of hysterics can occasionally manifest itself in unsuspected dimensions.
2. If the patient is seized with the fear that she becomes too accustomed to her physician, that in his presence she loses her independence and could even become sexually dependent upon him; this case is more significant because it is less determined individually. The occasion for this obstacle lies in the nature of the therapeutic distress. The patient has now a new motive to resist which manifests itself, not only in a certain reminiscence but at each attempt of the treatment. Whenever the pressure procedure is started the patient usually complains of headache. Her new motive for the resistance remains to her for the most part unconscious, and she manifests it by a newly created hysterical symptom. The headache signifies the aversion towards being influenced.
3. If the patient fears lest the painful ideas emerging from the content of the analysis would be transferred to the physician. This happens frequently, and, indeed, in many analyses it is a regular occurrence. The transference to the physician occurs through false connections.[1] I must here give an example. The origin of a certain hysterical symptom in one of my hysterical patients was the wish she entertained years ago which was immediately banished into the unconscious, that the man with whom she at that time conversed would heartily grasp her and force a kiss on her. After the ending of a session such a wish occurred to the patient in reference to me. She was horrified and spent a sleepless night, and at the next session, although she did not refuse the treatment she was totally unfit for the work. After I had discovered the obstacle and removed it, the work continued. The wish that so frightened the patient appeared as the next pathogenic reminiscence, that is, as the one now required by the logical connection. It came about in the following manner: The content of the wish at first appeared in the patient's consciousness without the recollection of the accessory circumstances which would have transferred this wish into the past. By the
- ↑ See Breuer und Freud, Studien über Hysterie. Deuticke, Leipzig und Wien, 1895, p. 55.
