Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/62

48 cooperation and voluntary attention of the patient. At times it was really surprising how promptly and how infallibly the individual scenes belonging to one theme succeeded each other in chronological order. It was as if she read from a long picture book the pages of which passed in review before her eyes. At other times there seemed to be inhibitions, of what kind I could not at that time surmise. When I exerted some pressure she maintained that nothing came into her mind. I repeated the pressure and told her to wait, but still nothing would come. At first when such obstinacy manifested itself I determined to discontinue the work and to try again, as the day seemed unpropitious. Two observations, however, caused me to change my procedure. Firstly, because such failure of this method only occurred when I found Elisabeth cheerful and free from pain and never when she had a bad day; secondly, because she frequently made assertions of seeing nothing after the lapse of a long pause during which her tense and occupied mind betrayed to me some psychic process within. I therefore decided to assume that the method had never failed, that under the pressure of my hands Elisabeth had each time perceived some idea or had seen some picture but that she was not always ready to inform me of it and attempted to repress the thing evoked. I could thing of two motives for such concealment; either Elisabeth subjected the idea that came to her mind to a criticism to which she was not entitled, thinking it not sufficiently important and unfit as an answer to the question, or she feared to say it because that statement was too disagreeable to her. I therefore proceeded as if I were perfectly convinced of the reliability of my technique. Whenever she asserted that nothing came into her mind, I did not let that pass. I assured her that something must have come to her but that perhaps she w'as not attentive enough, that I was quite willing to repeat the pressure. I also told her not to entertain any doubts concerning the correctness of the idea presenting itself to her mind, that that was not any of her concern; that it was her duty to remain perfectly objective and to tell whatever came into her mind, be it suitable or not, and I ended by saying that I knew well that something did come which she concealed from me and that as long as she would continue to do so she would not get rid of her pains. After such urging I found that