Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/123

Rh After having worked for a while in such manner a coöperating activity is usually manifested in the patient. A number of reminiscences now occur to him without any need of questioning or setting him a task. A way has thus been opened into an inner stratum, within which the patient now spontaneously disposes of the material of equal resistance. It is well to allow him to reproduce for a while without being influenced; of course, he is unable to reveal important connections, but he may be allowed to clear things within the same stratum. The things which he thus reproduces often seem disconnected, but they give up the material which is later revived by the recognized connections.

One has to guard here in general against two things. If the patient is checked in the reproduction of the inflowing ideas, something is apt to be "buried" which must be uncovered later with great effort. On the other hand one must not overestimate his "unconscious intelligence," and one must not allow it to direct the whole work. If I should wish to schematize the mode of labor, I could perhaps say that one should himself undertake the opening of the inner strata and the advancement in the radial direction, while the patient should take care of the peripheral extension.

The advancement is brought about by the fact that the resistance is overcome in the manner indicated above. As a rule, however, one must at first solve another problem. One must obtain a piece of a logical thread by which direction alone one can hope to penetrate into the interior. One should not expect that the. voluntary information of the patient, the material which is mostly in the superficial strata, will make it easy for the analyzer to recognize the locations where it enters into the deep, and to which points the desired connections of thought are attached. On the contrary, just this is cautiously concealed, the assertion of the patient sounds perfect and fixed in itself. One is at first confronted, as it were, by a wall which shuts off every view, and gives no suggestion of anything hidden behind it.

If, however, one views with a critical eye the assertion obtained from the patient without much effort and resistance, one will unmistakably discover in it gaps and injuries. Here the connection is manifestly interrupted and is scantily completed by the patient by an expression conveying quite insufficient information. Here