Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/63

Rh there was really no pressure that remained unsuccessful. I then had to assume that I correctly recognized the state of affairs, and indeed I won through this analysis perfect confidence in my technique. It often happened that only after the third pressure did she make a statement then added " Why I could have told you that the first time"—"Indeed why did you not say it"—"I thought that it was not correct: "or" I thought that I could avoid it, but it recurred each time." During this difficult work I began to attach a profounder significance to the resistance which the patient showed in the reproduction of her recollections, and I carefully compared these occasions in which it was especially striking.

I now come to the description of the third period of our treatment. The patient felt better, she was psychically unburdened and more capable, but the pains were manifestly not removed, reappearing from time to time with the old severity. The imperfect cure went hand in hand with the imperfect analysis, as yet I did not know in what moment and through what mechanisms the pains originated. During the reproduction of the most manifold scenes of the second period and the observation of the patient's resistance towards the reproduction, I formed a definite suspicion which I did not then dare to use as a basis for my action. An accidental observation turned the issue. While working with the patient one day I heard the steps of a man in the adjacent room and a rather pleasant voice asking some questions. My patient immediately arose requesting me to dicontinue the treatment for the day because she heard her brother-in-law who just arrived asking for her. Before this disturbance she was free from pains but thereafter she betrayed by her mien and gait the sudden appearance of violent pains. This strengthened my suspicion and I decided to elicit the decisive explanation.

I questioned her concerning the circumstances and causes of the first appearance of the pains. Her thoughts were directed to the summer resort in that watering place where she had been before taking the journey to Gastein. A number of scenes were reproduced which had already been treated less exhaustively. They recalled her frame of mind at that time, the exhaustion following the worriment about her mother's vision and the nursing of her mother during the time of the operation and her final