fluence like a new causative factor. The proof of this we see in a most remarkable phenomenon which at the same time gives to our discoveries a distinct practical interest.
We found, at first to our greatest surprise, that the individual hysterical symptoms immediately disappeared without returning if we succeeded in thoroughly awakening the memories of the causal process with its accompanying affect, and if the patient circumstantially discussed the process giving free play to the affect. Affectless memories are almost utterly useless. The psychic process originally rebuffed must be reproduced as vividly as possible so as to bring it back into the statum nascendi and then be thoroughly "talked over." At the same time if we deal with such exciting manifestations as convulsions, neuralgias and hallucinations they appear once more with their full intensity and then vanish forever. Functional attacks like paralyses and anesthesias likewise disappear, but naturally without any appreciable distinctness of their momentary aggravation.[1]
It is quite reasonable to suspect that one deals here with an unintentional suggestion. The patient expects to be relieved of his suffering and it is this expectation and not the discussion that is the effectual factor. But this is not so. The first observation of this kind in which a most complicated case of hysteria was analyzed and the individual causal symptoms separately abrogated, occurred in the year 1881, that is, in a "pre-suggestive" time. It was brought about through a spontaneous autohypnosis of the patient and caused the examiner the greatest surprise.
In reversing the sentence: cessante causa cessat effectus, we may conclude from this observation that the causal process continues to act in some way even after years, not indirectly by means
- ↑ The possibility of such a therapy was clearly recognized by Delboeuf and Binet, as is shown by the accompanying quotations: Delboeuf, Le magnétisme animal, Paris, 1889: "On s'expliquerait des lors comment le magnétiseur aide à guerison. Il remet le sujet dans l'état oû le mal s'est manifesté et combat par la parole le même mal, mais renaissant." (Binet, Les altérations de la personnalité, 1892, p. 243): "... peut-être verra-t-on qu'en reportant le malade par un artifice mental, au moment meme ou le symptome a apparu paur la premiere fois, on rend ce malade plus docile a une suggestion curative." In the interesting book of Janet, L'Automatism Psychologique, Paris, 1889, we find the description of a cure brought about in a hysterical girl by a process similar to our method.
