Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/26

12 groups which come to light in hypnoid states which are excluded from the rest of the associative process but are associable among themselves, thus representing a more or less highly organized rudimentary second consciousness, a condition seconde. A persistent hysterical symptom therefore corresponds to a projection of this second state into a bodily innervation otherwise controlled by the normal consciousness. A hysterical attack gives evidence of a higher organization of this second state, and if of recent origin it signifies a moment in which this hypnoid consciousness gained control of the whole existence, and hence we have an acute hysteria, but if it is a recurrent attack containing a memory we simply have a repetition of the same. Charcot has already given utterance to the fact that the hysterical attack must be the rudiment of a condition seconde. During the attack the control of the whole bodily innervation is transferred to the hypnoid consciousness. As familiar experiences show, the normal consciousness is not always repressed, it may even perceive the motor phenomena of the attack while the psychic processes of the same escape its cognizance.

The typical course of a grave hysteria, as everybody knows, is as follows: At first an ideation is formed in the hypnoid state which after sufficient development gains control in a period of "acute hysteria" of the bodily innervation and the existence of the patient thus forming persistent symptoms and attacks, and then with the exception of some remnants there is a recovery. If the normal personality can regain the upper hand, all that survived the hypnoid ideation then returns in hysterical attacks and at times it reproduces, in the personality, states which are again amenable to influences and capable of being affected by traumas. Frequently a sort of equilibrium then results among the psychic groups which are united in the same person; attack and normal life go hand in hand without influencing each other. The attack then comes spontaneously just as memories are wont to come; it may also be provoked just as memories may be by the laws of association. The provocation of the attack results either through stimulating a hysterogenic zone or through a new experience which by similarity recalls the pathogenic experience. We hope to be able to show that there is no essential difference between the apparently two diverse determinants, and that in both cases the hyperesthetic memory is touched. In other cases there