Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/47

Rh refuses to be examined and assumes a defensive attitude. With Miss V. R. when the hyperalgesia skin or muscles of her legs were pinched or pressed her face assumed a peculiar expression approaching nearer pleasure than pain, she cried out and—I had to think of a pleasurable tickling—her face reddened, she threw her head backward, closed her eyes, and her body bent backward; all this was not very distinct but sufficiently marked so that it could only agree with the conception that her affliction was a hysteria and that the irritation touched a hysterogenic zone.

Her mien was not in accord with the pain which the pinching of the muscles and skin were supposed to excite. It probably harmonized better with the content of the thoughts which were behind the pain and which were evoked in the patient by irritating that part of the body associated with them. I have repeatedly observed similar significant expressions on irritating hyperalgesia zones in unmistakable cases of hysteria. The other gestures evidently corresponded to the slightest indications of a hysterical attack.

We could not at that time find any explanation for the unusual localization of the hysterogenic zone. That the hyperalgesia chiefly concerned the muscles gave material for reflection. The most frequent affliction causing the diffuse and local pressure sensitiveness of the muscles is the rheumatic infiltration of the same, the common chronic muscular rheumatism about which aptitude to mask nervous affections I have already spoken. The consistency of the painful muscles in Miss v. R. did not contradict this assumption, as there were many hard cords in the muscle masses which seemed to be especially sensitive. There was probably also an organic change in the muscles, in the assumed sense, upon which the neurosis rested and which significance was markedly exaggerated by the neurosis.

The therapy followed out was based on a supposition of a mixed affection. We recommended the continuation of a systematic massage and faradization of the sensitive muscles without regard to the pain produced, and in order to remain in communication with the patient I undertook the treatment of her legs by means of strong Franklin's sparks. To her question whether she should force herself to walk we answered decidedly in the affirmative.