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etc., so as to lessen her
tormenting thirst. This had lasted for some six weeks, when one day
during hypnosis she grumbled about her English lady-companion whom
she did not care for, and went on to describe, with every sign of
disgust, how she had once gone into that lady’s room and how
her little dog - horrid creature! - had drunk out of a glass there.
The patient had said nothing, as she had wanted to be polite. After
giving further energetic expression to the anger she had held back,
she asked for something to drink, drank a large quantity of water
without any difficulty and woke from her hypnosis with the glass at
her lips; and thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to
return. A number of extremely obstinate whims were similarly
removed after she had described the experiences which had given
rise to them. She took a great step forward when the first of her
chronic symptoms disappeared in the same way - the contracture of
her right leg, which, it is true, had already diminished a great
deal. These findings - that in the case of this patient the
hysterical phenomena disappeared as soon as the event which had
given rise to them was reproduced in her hypnosis - made it
possible to arrive at a therapeutic technical procedure which left
nothing to be desired in its logical consistency and systematic
application. Each individual symptom in this complicated case was
taken separately in hand; all the occasions on which it had
appeared were described in reverse order, starting before the time
when the patient became bed-ridden and going back to the event
which had led to its first appearance. When this had been described
the symptom was permanently removed.
     
       ¹ [In English in the original.]
     
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    Studies On Hysteria
    34
     
       In this way her paralytic
contractures and anaesthesias, disorders of vision and hearing of
every sort, neuralgias, coughing, tremors, etc., and finally her
disturbances of speech were ‘talked away’. Amongst the
disorders of vision, the following, for instance, were disposed of
separately: the convergent squint with diplopia; deviation of both
eyes to the right, so that when her hand reached out for something
it always went to the left of the object; restriction of the visual
field; central amblyopia; macropsia; seeing a death’s head
instead of her father; inability to read. Only a few scattered
phenomena (such, for instance, as the extension of the paralytic
contractures to the left side of her body) which had developed
while she was confined to bed, were untouched by this process of
analysis, and it is probable, indeed, that they in fact had no
immediate physical cause.
       It turned out to be quite
impracticable to shorten the work by trying to elicit in her memory
straight away the first provoking cause of her symptoms. She was
unable to find it, grew confused, and things proceeded even more
slowly than if she was allowed quietly and steadily to follow back
the thread of memories on which she had embarked. Since the latter
method, however, took too long in the evening hypnosis, owing to
her being over-strained and distraught by ‘talking out’
the two other sets of experiences - and owing, too, to the
reminiscences needing time before they could attain sufficient
vividness - we evolved the following procedure. I used to visit her
in the morning and hypnotize her. (Very simple methods of doing
this were arrived at empirically.) I would next ask her to
concentrate her thoughts on the symptom we were treating at the
moment and to tell me the occasions on which it had appeared. The
patient would proceed to describe in rapid succession and under
brief headings the external events concerned and these I would jot
down. During her subsequent evening hypnosis she would then, with
the help of my notes, give me a fairly detailed account of these
circumstances.
     
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    Studies On Hysteria
    35
     
       An example will show the exhaustive
manner in which she accomplished this. It was