Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/125

Rh Strata by the same thread, usually it breaks on the way when the pressure fails, giving up either no experience, or one which cannot be explained or be continued despite all efforts. In such a case we soon learn how to protect ourselves from the obvious confusion. The expression of the patient must decide whether one really reached an end or encountered a case needing no psychic explanation, or whether it is the enormous resistance that halts the work. If the latter cannot soon be overcome, it may be assumed that the thread has been followed into a stratum which is as yet impenetrable. One lets it fall in order to grasp another thread which may, perhaps, be followed up just as far. If one has followed all the threads into this stratum, if the knottings have been reached through which no single isolated thread can be followed, it is well to think of seizing anew the resistances on hand. One can readily imagine how complicated such a work may become. By constantly overcoming the resistance, one pushes his way into the inner strata, gaining knowledge concerning the accumulative themes and passing threads found in this layer; one examines as far as he can advance with the means at hand, and by means of the pressure procedure he gains first information concerning the content of the next stratum.

The threads are dropped, taken up again, and followed until they reach the juncture; they are always retrieved, and by following a memory fascicle one reaches some by-way which finally opens again. In this manner it is possible to leave the work, layer by layer, and advance directly on the main road to the nucleus of the pathogenic organization. Thus the fight is won but not finished. One has to follow up the other threads and exhaust the material; but now the patient helps again energetically, for his resistance has mostly been broken.

In these later stages of the work it is of advantage if one can surmise the connection and tell it to the patient before it has been revealed. If the conjecture is correct the course of the analysis is accelerated, but even an incorrect hypothesis helps, for it urges the patient to participate and elicits from him energetic refutation, thus revealing that he surely knows better.

One, thereby, becomes astonishingly convinced, that it is not possible to press upon the patient things which he apparently does not know, or to influence the results of the analysis by exciting