CHAPTER I.
The Psychic Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.[1]
(Preliminary Communication.)
I.
Instigated by a number of accidental observations we have investigated for a number of years the different forms and symptoms of hysteria in order to discover the cause and the process which provoked the phenomena in question for the first time, in a great many cases years back. In the great majority of cases we did not succeed in elucidating this starting point from the mere history, no matter how detailed it might have been, partly because we had to deal with experiences about which discussion was disagreeable to the patients, but mainly because they really could not recall them; often they had no inkling of the causal connection between the occasioning process and the pathological phenomenon. It was generally necessary to hypnotize the patients and reawaken the memory of that time in which the symptom first appeared, and we thus succeeded in exposing that connection in a most precise and convincing manner.
This method of examination in a great number of cases has furnished us with results which seem to be of theoretical as well as of practical value.
It is of theoretical value because it has shown to us that in the determination of the pathology of hysteria the accidental moment plays a much greater part than is generally known and recognized. It is quite evident that in "traumatic" hysteria it is the accident which evokes the syndrome. Moreover in hysterical crises, if patients state that they hallucinate in each attack the same process which evoked the first attack, here too, the causal connection seems quite clear. The state of affairs is more obscure in the other phenomena.
Our experiences have shown us that the most varied symptoms
- ↑ Written in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Breuer.
