Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/122

108 following pages with comparisons which are not altogether free from objections.)

If, after a thorough adjustment, one could show to a third party the pathogenic material in its present recognized, complicated and multidimensional organization, he would justly propound the question, " How could such a camel go through the needle's eye?" Indeed, one does not speak unjustly of a "narrowing of consciousness." The term gains in sense and freshness for the physician who accomplishes such an analysis. Only one single rem.iniscence can enter into the ego-consciousness; the patient occupied in working his way through this one sees nothing of that which follows, and forgets everything that has already wedged its way through. If the conquest of this one pathogenic reminiscence strikes against impediments, as, for example, if the patient does not yield the resistance against it, but wishes to repress or distort it, the strait is, so to speak, blocked; the work comes to a standstill, it cannot advance, and the one reminiscence in the breach confronts the patient until he takes it up into the breadth of his ego. The whole spacially extended mass of the pathogenic material is thus drawn through a narrow fissure and reaches consciousness as if disjointed into fragments or strips, and it is the task of the psychotherapist to recompense it into the conjectured organization. He who desires still more comparisons may think here of a Chinese puzzle.

If one is about to begin an analysis in which one may expect such an organization of the pathogenic material, the following results of experience may be useful: It is perfectly hopeless to attempt to make any direct headway towards the nucleus of the pathogenic organization. Even if it could be guessed the patient would still not know what to start with the explanation given to him, nor would it change him psychically.

There is nothing left to do but follow up the periphery of the pathogenic psychic formation. One begins by allowing the patient to relate and recall what he knows, during which one can already direct his attention, and through the application of the pressure procedure slight resistances may be overcome. Whenever a new way is opened through pressure it can be expected that the patient will continue it for some distance without any new resistance.