Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/16

2 which pass as spontaneous, or so to say idiopathic attainments of hysteria, stand in just as stringent connection with the causal trauma as the transparent phenomena mentioned. To such causal moments we were able to refer neuralgias as well as the different kinds of anesthesias often of years' duration, contractures and paralyses, hysterical attacks and epileptiform convulsions which every observer has taken for real epilepsy, petit mal and tic-like affections, persistent vomiting and anorexia, even the refusal of nourishment, all kinds of visual disturbances, constantly recurring visual hallucinations, and similar affections. The disproportion between the hysterical symptoms of years' duration and the former cause is the same as the one we are regularly accustomed to see in the traumatic neurosis. Very often they are experiences of childhood which have established more or less intensive morbid phenomena for all succeeding years.

The connection is often so clear that it is perfectly manifest how the causal event produced just this and no other phenomenon. It is quite clearly determined by the cause. Thus let us take the most banal example; if a painful affect originates while eating but is repressed, it may produce nausea and vomiting and continue for months as a hysterical symptom. A girl was anxiously distressed while watching at a sick bed. She fell into a dreamy state and experienced a frightful hallucination, and at the same time her right arm hanging over the back of a chair became numb. This resulted in a paralysis, contracture, and anesthesia of that arm. She wanted to pray but could find no words, but finally succeeded in uttering an English prayer for children. Later, on developing a very grave and most complicated hysteria, she spoke, wrote, and understood only English, whereas her native tongue was incomprehensible to her for a year and a half. A very sick child finally falls asleep. The mother exerts all her will power to make no noise to awaken it, but just because she resolved to do so she emits a clicking sound with her tongue ("hysterical counter-will"). This was later repeated on another occasion when she wished to be absolutely quiet, developing into a tic which in the form of tongue clicking accompanied every excitement for years. A very intelligent man was present while his brother was anesthetized and his ankylosed hip stretched. At the moment when the joint yielded and crackled he perceived severe pain in his own hip which continued for almost a year.