Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/113

Rh resistance. To be sure, it may happen under certain conditions that the procedure may be applied without bringing anything to light; as, for example, we may ask for the further etiology of a symptom when the same has already been exhausted; or, we may investigate for the psychic genealogy of a symptom, perhaps a pain, which really was of somatic origin. In these cases the patient equally insists that nothing occurred to him, and he is right. We should strive to avoid doing an injustice to the patient by making it a general rule not to lose sight of his features while he calmly lies before us during the analysis. One can then learn to distinguish, without any difficulty, the psychic calm in the real non appearance of a reminiscence from the tension and emotional signs under which the patient labors in trying to disavow the emerging reminiscences for the purpose of defense. The differential diagnostic application of the pressure procedure is really based on such experiences.

We can see, therefore, that even with the help of the pressure procedure the task is not an easy one. The only advantage gained is the fact that we have learned from the results of this method in what direction to investigate, and what things we have to force upon the patient. For some cases that suffices, for the question is really to find the secret, and tell it to the patient, so that he is usually then forced to relinquish his resistance. In other cases more is necessary; here the surviving resistance of the patient manifests itself by the fact that the connections become torn, the solutions do not appear, and the recalled pictures come indistinctly and incompletely. On reviewing, at a later period, the earlier results of an analysis, we are often surprised at the distorted aspects of all the occurrences and scenes which we have snatched from the patient by the pressure procedure. It usually lacks the essential part, the relations to the person or to the theme, and for that reason the picture remained incomprehensible. I will now give one or two examples showing the effects of such a censoring during the first appearance of the pathogenic memories. The patient sees the upper part of a female body on which a loose covering fits carelessly, only much later he adds to this torso the head, and thereby betrays a person and a relationship. Or, he relates a reminiscence of his childhood about two boys whose forms are very indistinct, and to whom a certain