Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/20

6 in the form of deploring and giving vent to the torments of the secret (confession) is in itself an adequate reflex. If such reaction does not result through deeds, words, or in the lightest case through weeping, the memory of the occurrence retains above all the affective accentuation.

The ab-reaction (abreagiren), however, is not the only form of discharge at the disposal of the normal psychic mechanism of the healthy person who has experienced a psychic trauma. The memory of the trauma even where it has not been ab-reacted enters into the great complex of the association. It joins the other experiences which are perhaps antagonistic to it and thus undergoes correction through the other ideas. For example, after an accident the memory of the danger and (dimmed) repetition of the fright is accompanied by the recollection of the further course, the rescue, and the consciousness of present security. The memory of a grievance may be corrected by a rectification of the state of affairs by reflecting upon one's own dignity and similar things. Thus the normal person is able to cause a disappearance of the accompanying affect by means of association.

In addition there appears that general blurring of impressions, that fading of memories which we call "forgetting," and which above all wears out the affective ideas no longer active. It follows from our observations that those memories which become the causes of hysterical phenomena have been preserved for a long time with wonderful freshness and with their perfect emotional tone. As a further striking and a later realizable fact we have to mention that the patients do not perhaps have the same control of these as of their other memories of life. On the contrary, these experiences are either completely lacking from the memory of the patients in their usual psychic state or at most exist greatly abridged. Only after the patients are questioned in the hypnotic state do these memories appear with the undiminished vividness of fresh occurrences. Thus one of our patients in a hypnotic state reproduced with hallucinatory vividness throughout half a year all that excited her during an acute