Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/228

214 brought about by the indiscretion of the physician, is a suspension of the morbid production.

If this hope seems to you utopic, please remember that the removal of neurotic symptoms has actually been accomplished in this manner though only in isolated cases. Just think how frequently the hallucination of the Holy Virgin used to occur in former times among peasant girls. As long as such a manifestation drew a large crowd of believers or even resulted in the erection of a chapel over the holy shrine, the visionary state of these girls remained inaccessible to suggestion. Today even the priesthood has changed its attitude towards such manifestations. They allow the doctor and the policeman to visit the visionary girl; consequently the holy virgin seldom reveals herself. Or, allow me to study with you the same process, which I have formerly deferred for the future, in an analogous but lower and more easily observable situation. Let us assume that a circle of ladies and gentlemen of good breeding have agreed upon making a day's excursion to some country place. The ladies have decided among themselves that if one of them should desire to satisfy a natural want she was to say aloud that she is going to pick some flowers. But a mischievous joker discovered this secret and put on the printed program which was sent to those invited: if the ladies wish to ease nature they may say that they are going to pick flowers. Of course, none of the ladies would wish to make use of this covert allusion then, and this also makes impossible the use of any other similar formula. What will be the result? The ladies will admit unabashed their natural wants and the gentlemen will take no offense at it. Let us now return to our more serious case. Because the conflicts of life were too difficult for them so and so many persons have taken refuge in the neuroses and have thereby attained the unmistakable morbid gain, although it is a bit too costly for the time. What will those people be forced to do if the flight into the disease will be closed to them by the indiscrete explanations of psychoanalysis? They will have to be honest and acknowledge the impulses which become active in them, they will have to hold their own in the conflict, they will fight or give up, and the tolerance of society which will inevitably be brought about by psychoanalytic explanation will come to their aid.