sleep-like states to remove that distribution of excitement which depends on the "will" of the conscious personality.
We accordingly recognize that the characteristic moment of hysteria is not the splitting of consciousness but the ability of conversion and as an important part of the hitherto unknown disposition of hysteria we can mention the psycho-physical adaptation for the transference of a great sum of excitement into bodily innervation.
The adaptation does not in itself exclude psychic health, and leads to hysteria only in event of a psychic incompatibility or accumulation of excitement. With this turn, we—Breuer and I—come near to the familiar definitions of hysteria of Oppenheim[1] and Strumpel [2] and deviate from Janet,[3] who assigns to the splitting of consciousness too great a role in the characteristics of hysteria. The description here given can lay claim to the fact that it explains the connection between the conversion and the hysterical splitting of consciousness.
II.
In a predisposed person if there is no adaptation for conversion and still for the purpose of defense a separation of the unbearable idea from its affect is undertaken, the affect must then remain in the psychic sphere. The weakened idea remains apart from all association in consciousness, but its freed affect attaches itself to other not in themselves unbearable ideas, which on account of this "false" connection become obsessions. This is in brief the psychological theory of the obsessions and phobias concerning which I have spoken above.
- ↑ Oppenheim: Hysteria is an exaggerated expression of emotion. But the "expression of emotion" represents that amount of psychic excitement which normally experiences conversion.
- ↑ Strümpel : The disturbance of hysteria lies in the psycho-physical, there where the physical and psychical are connected with each other.
- ↑ Janet, in the second chapter of his spirited essay "Quelques definitions," etc., has treated the objection that the splitting of consciousness belongs also to the psychoses and the so called psychaesthenia, but in my opinion he has not satisfactorily solved it. It is essentially this objection which urged him to call hysteria a form of degeneration. But through no characteristic is he able to separate sufficiently the hysterical splitting of consciousness from the psychopathic, etc.
