Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/42

28 I would not underestimate the aforesaid case even though it only represents a young and light hysteria presenting but few symptoms. Moreover, it seems to me instructive that even such a slight neurotic affliction requires so many psychic determinants, and on a more exhaustive consideration of this history I am tempted to put it down as an illustration of that form of hysteria which even persons not burdened by heredity may acquire if their experiences favor it. It should be well noted that I do not speak of a hysteria which may be independent of all predisposition; such form does not probably exist, but we speak of such a pre-disposition only after the person became hysterical, as nothing pointed to it before this. A neuropathic disposition as commonly understood is something different. It is determined even before the disease by a number of hereditary burdens, or a sum of individual psychic abnormalities. As far as I know none of these moments could be demonstrated in the case of Miss Lucy R. Her hysteria could therefore be called acquired and presupposes nothing except probably a very marked susceptibility to acquire hysteria, a characteristic about which we know hardly anything. The chief importance in such cases lies in the nature of the trauma, to be sure in connection with the reaction of the person to the trauma. It is an indispensable condition for the acquirement of hysteria that there should arise a relation of incompatibility between the ego and some of its approaching presentations. I hope to be able to show in another place how a variety of neurotic disturbances originate from the different procedures which the "ego" pursues in order to free itself from that incompatibility. The hysterical form of defence, for which a special adaptation is required, consists in converting the excitement into physical innervation. The gain brought about by this process is the crowding out of the unbearable presentation from the ego consciousness, which then contains instead the physical reminiscences produced by conversion—in our case the subjective sensation of smell—and suffers from the affect which is more or less distinctly adherent to these reminiscences. The situation thus produced is no longer changeable, for changing and conversion annihilate the conflict which helped towards the adjustment of the affect. Thus