Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/34

20 After this long but unavoidable digression I now return to the history of Miss Lucy R. As aforesaid, she did not merge into somnambulism when an attempt was made to hypnotize her, but lay calmly in a degree of mild suggestibility, her eyes constantly closed, the features immobile, the limbs without motion. I asked her whether she remembered on what occasion the smell perception of burned pastry originated.—"Oh, yes, I know it well. It was about two months ago, two days before my birthday. I was with the children (two girls) in the school room playing and teaching them to cook, when a letter just left by the letter carrier was brought in. From its postmark and handwriting I recognized it as one sent to me by my mother from Glasgow and I wished to open it and read it. The children then came running over, pulled the letter out of my hand and exclaimed, 'No you must not read it now, it is probably a congratulatory letter for adhere to this. What was the matter with your friend?"—"Her death affected me very much, because I was very friendly with her. A few weeks before another young girl died, which attracted a great deal of attention in our city, but then I was only seventeen years old."—" You see, I told you that the thought obtained under the pressure of the hands can be relied upon. Well now, can you recall the thought that you had when you became dizzy in the street?"—"There was no thought, it was vertigo."—" That is quite impossible, such conditions are never without accompanying ideas. I will press your head again and you will think of it. Well, what came to your mind?"—"I thought, 'now I am the third.'"—"What do you mean?"—"When I became dizzy I must have thought, now I will die like the other two."—"That was then the idea, during the attack you thought of your friend, her death must have made a great impression on you."—"Yes, indeed, I recall now that I felt dreadful when I heard of her death, to think that I should go to a ball while she lay dead, but I anticipated so much pleasure at the ball and was so occupied with the invitation that I did not wish to think of this sad event." (Notice here the intentional repression from consciousness which caused the reminiscences of her friend to become pathogenic.)The attack was now in a measure explained, but I still needed the occasional moment which just then provoked this recollection, and accidentally I formed a happy supposition about it.—"Can you recall through which street you passed at that time?"—"Surely, the main street with its old houses, I can see it now." — "And where did your friend live?"—"In the same street. I had just passed her house and was two houses farther when I was seized with the attack."—"Then it was the house which you passed that recalled your dead friend, and the contrast which you then did not wish to think about that again took possession of you."