Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/112

98, and yet are only uttered with resistance. There are also cases where the patient seeks to disavow the recollections, even while they are being reproduced, with such remarks as these: "Now something occurred to me, but apparently you talked it into me"; or, "I know what you expect to this question, you surely think that I thought of this and that." An especially clever way of shifting is found in the following expression: "Now something really occurred to me, but it seems to me as if I added it, and that it is not a reproduced thought."—In all these cases I remain inflexibly firm, I admit none of these distinctions, but explain to the patient that these are only forms and subterfuges of the resistance against the reproduction of a recollection which in spite of all we are forced to recognize.

One generally experiences less trouble in the reproduction of pictures than thoughts. Hysterical patients who are usually visual are easier to manage than patients suffering from obsessions. Once the picture emerges from the memory we can hear the patient state that as he proceeds to describe it, it proportionately fades away and becomes indistinct; the patient wears it out, so to speak, by transforming it into words. We then orient ourselves through the memory picture itself in order to find the direction towards which the work should be continued. We say to the patient, " Just look again at the picture, has it disappeared?"—"As a whole, yes, but I still see this detail."—"Then this must have some meaning, you will either see something new, or this remnant will remind you of something." When the work is finished the visual field becomes free again, and a new picture can be called forth ; but at other times such a picture, in spite of its having been described, remains persistently before the inner eye of the patient, and I take this as a sign that he still has something important to tell me concerning its theme. As soon as this has been accomplished, the picture disappears like a wandering spirit returning to rest.

It is naturally of great value for the progress of the analysis to carry our point with the patient, otherwise we have to depend on what he thinks is proper to impart. It, therefore, will be pleasant to hear that the pressure procedure never failed except in a single case which I shall discuss later, but which I can now characterize by the fact that there was a special motive for the