Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/32

18 we are seeking. Well, what have you seen or what came into your mind?"

On applying this method for the first time (it was not in the case of Miss Lucy R.) I was surprised to find just what I wanted, and I may say that it has since hardly ever failed me, it always showed me the way to proceed in my investigations and enabled me to conclude all such analyses without somnambulism. Gradually I became so bold that when a patient would answer, "I see nothing," or "Nothing came into my mind," I insisted that it was impossible. They probably had the right thought but did not believe it and repudiated it. I would repeat the procedure as often as they wished, and every time they saw the same thing. Indeed, I was always right; the patients had not as yet learned to let their criticism rest. They repudiated the emerging recollection or fancy because they considered it as a useless intruding disturbance, but after they imparted it, it was always shown that it was the right one. Occasionally after forcing a communication by pressing the head three or four times I got such answer as, "Yes, I was aware of it the first time, but did not wish to say it," or "I hoped that it would not be this."

By this method it was far more laborious to broaden the alleged narrowed consciousness than by investigating in the somnambulic state, and it made me independent of somnambulism and afforded me an insight into the motives which are frequently decisive for the "forgetting" of recollections. I am in position to assert that this forgetting is often intentional and desired. It is always only manifestly successful.

It appeared to me even more remarkable that apparently long forgotten numbers and dates can be reproduced by a similar process, thus proving an unexpected faithfulness of memory. The insignificant choice which one has in searching for numbers and dates especially allows us to take to our aid the familiar axiom of the theory of aphasia, namely, that recognition is a slighter accomplishment of memory than spontaneous recollection.

Hence to a patient who is unable to recall in what year, month or day a certain event took place, enumerate the years during which it might have occurred as well as the names of the twelve months and the thirty-one days of the month, and assure him