Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/189

 CHAPTER VIII.

Gentlemen:

It is almost eight years since, at the request of your deceased chairman, Prof. v. Reder, I had the pleasure of speaking in your midst on the subject of hysteria. Shortly before (1895) I had published the "Studien über Hysterie" together with Dr. J. Breuer, and on the basis of a new knowledge for which we are thankful to this investigator, I have attempted to introduce a new way of treating the neurosis. Fortunately, I can say that the endeavors of our " Studies " have met with success, and that the ideas which they advocate concerning the effects of psychic traumas through the restraint of affects and the conception of the hysterical symptom as a result of a displacement of excitement from the psychic to the physical—ideas for which we have created the terms "ab-reaction" and "conversion"—are today generally known and understood. At least in German-speaking countries there are no descriptions of hysteria which do not to a certain extent take cognizance of them, and no colleague who does not at least partially follow this theory. And yet as long as they were new these theories and these terms must have sounded strange enough!

I can not say the same thing about the therapeutic procedure which we have proposed to our colleagues together with our theory. It still struggles for recognition. This may have its special reasons. The technique of the procedure was at that time still rudimentary. I was unable to give those indications to the medical reader of the book which would enable him to perform such a treatment. But surely there were other causes of a general nature. To many physicians psychotherapy even today appears as a product of modern mysticism, and in comparison to our physico-chemical remedies the application of which is based on physiological insight, psychotherapy appears quite unscientific 175