Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/89

 CHAPTER IV. In our "Preliminary Communication" we have stated that while investigating the etiology of hysterical symptoms we have also discovered a therapeutic method which we consider of gractical significance. "We found, at first to our very greatest surprise, that the individual hysterical symptoms immediately disappeared without returning if we succeeded in thoroughly awakening the memories of the causal process with its accompanying effect, and if the patient circumstantially discussed the process giving free play to the affect" (p. 4).

We furthermore attempted to explain how our psychotherapeutic method acts. "It does away with the effects of the original not ab-reacted to ideas by affording an outlet to the suppressed affect through speech. It brings it into associative correction by drawing it into normal consciousness (in mild hypnosis), or it is done away with through the physician's suggestion just as happens in somnambulism with amnesia" (p. 13).

Although the essential features of this method have been enumerated in the preceding pages, a repetition is unavoidable, and I shall now attempt to show connectedly how far-reaching this method is, its superiority over others, its technique, and its difficulties.

I. I, for my part, may state that I can adhere to the "Preliminary Communication," but I must confess that after continuous occupation for years with the problems therein touched, I was confronted with new views, as a result of which the former material underwent at least a partial change in grouping and conception. It would be unjust to impute too much of the responsibility for this development to my honored friend, J. Breuer. I therefore take the weight of responsibility upon myself.

In attempting to use Breuer's method of treating hysterical symptoms in a great number of patients by investigation and 75