Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/81

Rh the first trauma and then subsided, but reappeared after the next trauma and become fixed. Yet no real distinction can be made between the temporary appearance and the latency after the first motives. In a large majority of cases it was also found that the first traumas had left no symptoms, while a later trauma of the same kind produced a symptom for the origin of which the cooperation of the former motives could not be dispensed with and for the solution of which it really required a consideration of all the motives. Translating this into the language of the conversion theory we will say that this undeniable fact of the summation of the traumas and the erstwhile latency of the symptoms simply means that the conversion can be brought about from a fresh as well as from a remembered affect, and this assumption fully explains the contradiction which seems to exist in the history and analysis of Miss Elisabeth v. R.

There is no question that normal persons carry in their consciousness in considerable numbers the continuation of ideas with unadjusted affects. The theory which I just asserted merely approximates the behavior of hysteria to the normal. It is apparently reduced to a quantitative moment; it is simply a question of how many such affective strains an organization can endure. Even a hysterical person will be able to retain a certain amount in an unadjusted state, but if through a summation of similar motives it increases beyond the individual's endurance, the impetus for conversion is formed. It is therefore no singular theory but almost a postulate to say that the formation of hysterical symptoms may also be brought about at the cost of recollected affects.

I have now occupied myself with the motive and mechanism of this case of hysteria, it still remains to discuss the determination of the hysterical symptoms. Why should just the pains in the legs be selected to represent the psychic pains? The circumstances of the case point to the fact that this somatic pain was not created by the neurosis but was merely utilized, aggravated, and retained by it. I will add that in most of the cases of hysterical algias into which I have been able to gain an insight the conditions were similar, that is, there was to begin with always a real organically founded pain. It is always the most common, the most widespread pains of humanity that seem to be most frequently called upon to play a part in hysteria. Among the most common