Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/97

Rh normal ego which is occupied with the defense, and thus preventing it from merging into a psychosis or into ultimate confusion.

That the cathartic method can accomplish something, even in an acute hysteria, and that it can even reduce the new productions of the morbid symptoms quite practically and noticeably, is undoubtedly evident from the case of Anna O., in which Breuer first learned to exercise this process.

5. Where we deal with chronic progressive hysterias with moderate or continued productions of hysterical symptoms, we learn to regret the lack of a causally effective therapy, but we also learn to value the indications of the cathartic method as a symptomatic remedy. We then deal with an injury produced by an etiology which continues to act chronically. We have to strengthen the capacity for resistance of the nervous system of our patient, and we must bear in mind that the existence of an hysterical symptom signifies a weakening of resistance of the nervous system, and represents a predisposing moment. From the mechanism of monosymptomatic hysteria we know that a new hysterical symptom generally originates as an addition to and as an analogy of one already in existence. The location once penetrated represents the weak spot which can be penetrated again. The split off psychic group plays the part of the provoking crystal from which a formerly omitted crystallization emerges with great facility. To remove the already existing symptoms, to do away with the psychic alterations lying at their basis, is the return to the patients the full measure of their resistance capacity, with which they are successfully able to resist the noxious influences. One can do a great deal for the patient by such long continued watchfulness and occasional "chimney-sweeping."

6. I still have to mention the apparent contradiction arising between the admission that not all hysterical symptoms are psychogenic, and the assertion that they can all be removed by psychotherapeutic procedures. The solution lies in the fact that some of these non-psychogenic symptoms, though they represent morbid symptoms, as, for instance, the stigmata, should nevertheless not be designated as affections, and hence it cannot be