Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/115

Rh been accomplished there remains nothing for the doctor to correct or abolish. All the contrary suggestions necessary have already been employed during the struggle carried on against the resistance. The case may be compared to the unlocking of a closed door, where, as soon as the door knob has been pressed downward, no other difficulties are encountered in opening the door.

Among the intellectual motives employed for the overcoming of the resistance one can hardly dispense with one affective moment, that is, the personal equation of the doctor, and in a number of cases this alone will be able to break the resistance. The conditions here do not differ from those found in any other branch of medicine, and one should not expect any therapeutic method to fully disclaim the assistance of this personal moment.

III. In view of the discussions in the preceding section concerning the difficulty of my technique, which I have unreservedly exposed,—I have really collected them from my most difficult cases, though it will often be easier work—in view then of this state of affairs everybody will wish to ask whether it would not be more suitable, instead of all these tortures, to apply oneself more energetically to hypnosis, or to limit the application of the cathartic method to only such cases as can be placed in deep hypnosis. To the latter proposition I should have to answer that the number of patients available for my skill would shrink considerably, but to the former advice I will advance the supposition that even where hypnosis could be produced the resistance would not be very much lessened. My experiences in this respect are not particularly extensive, so that I am unable to go beyond this supposition, but wherever I achieved a cathartic cure in the hypnotic state I found that the work devolved upon me was not less than in the state of concentration. I have only recently finished such a treatment during which course I caused the disappearance of a hysterical paralysis of the legs. The patient merged into a state, psychically very different from the conscious, and somatically distinguished by the fact that she was unable to open her eyes or rise without my ordering her to do so; and still I never had a case showing greater resistance than this one. I placed no value on these