Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/31

Rh cathartic method seems inapplicable. For it is based on the fact that in the altered state of consciousness the patients have at their disposal such recollections and recognize such connections which do not apparently exist in their normal conscious state. Wherever the somnambulic broadening of consciousness lacks there must also be an absence of the possibility of bringing about a causal relation which the patient cannot give to the doctor as something known to him, and it is just the pathogenic recollections "which are lacking from the memory of the patients in their usual psychic states or only exist in a most condensed state" (preliminary communication).

My memory helped me out of this embarrassment. I, myself, saw Bernheim adduce proof that the recollections of somnambulism are only manifestly forgotten in the waking state and can be readily reproduced by slight urging accompanied by hand pressure which is supposed to mark another conscious state. He, for instance, imparted to a somnambulist the negative hallucination that he was no more present, and then attempted to make himself noticeable to her by the most manifold and regardless attacks, but was unsuccessful. After the patient was awakened he asked her what he did to her during the time that she thought he was not there. She replied very much astonished, that she knew nothing, but he did not give in, insisting that she would recall everything; and placed his hand on her forehead so that she should recall things, and behold, she finally related all that she did not apparently perceive in the somnambulic state and about which she ostensibly knew nothing in the waking state.

This astonishing and instructive experiment was my model. I decided to proceed on the supposition that my patients knew everything that was of any pathogenic significance, and that all that was necessary was to force them to impart it. When I reached a point where to the question "Since when have you this symptom?" or, "Where does it come from?" I receive the answer, "I really don't know this," I proceeded as follows: I placed my hand on the patient's forehead or took her head between my hands and said, "Under the pressure of my hand it will come into your mind. In the moment that I stop the pressure you will see something before you, or something will pass through your mind which you must note. It is that which