Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses · Sigmund Freud
CHAPTER X. HYSTERICAL FANCIES AND THEIR RELATIONS TO BISEXUALITY.[57]
Footnote 50: A psychological theory of the repression ought also to inform us why only ideas of a sexual content can be repressed. It may be formulated as follows: It is known that ideas of a sexual content produce exciting processes in the genitals resembling the actual sexual experience. It may be assumed that this somatic excitement becomes transformed into psychic. As a rule the activity referred to is much stronger at the time of the occurrence than at the recollection of the same. But if the sexual experience takes place during the time of sexual immaturity and the recollection of the same is awakened during or after maturity, the recollection then acts disproportionately more exciting than the previous experience, for puberty has in the mean time incomparably increased the reactive capacity of the sexual apparatus. But such an inverse proportion seems to contain the psychological determination of repression. Through the retardation of the pubescent maturity in comparison with the psychic function, the sexual life offers the only existing possibility for that inversion of the relative efficacy. The infantile traumas subsequently act like fresh experiences, but they are then unconscious. Deeper psychological discussions I will have to postpone for another time. I moreover call attention to the fact that the here considered time of “sexual maturity” does not coincide with puberty, but occurs before the same (eight to ten years).
Footnote 51: One example instead of many: An eleven-year-old boy has obsessively arranged for himself the following ceremonial before going to bed: He could not fall asleep unless he related to his mother most minutely all experiences of the day; not the smallest scrap of paper or any other rubbish was allowed in the evening on the carpet of his bedroom. The bed had to be moved close to the wall, three chairs had to stand in front of it, and the pillows had to lie in just such a position. In order to fall asleep he had to kick with both legs a number of times, and then had to lie on the side. This was explained as follows: Years before while putting this pretty boy to sleep, the servant girl made use of this opportunity to lay over him and assault him sexually. When this reminiscence was later awakened by a recent experience it made itself known to consciousness by the compulsion in the above mentioned ceremonial which sense could really be surmised and the details verified by psychoanalysis. The chairs before the bed which was close to the wall—so that no one could have access to it; the arrangement of the pillows in a definite manner—so that they should be differently arranged than they were on that evening; the motion with the legs—to kick away the person lying on him; sleeping on the side—because during that scene he lay on his back; the detailed confession to his mother—because in consequence of the prohibition of his seductress he concealed from his mother this and other sexual experiences; finally, keeping the floor of his bedroom clean—because this was the main reproach which he had to hear from his mother up to that time.
Footnote 52: When the meagre success of this treatment was later removed by an exacerbation, she did not again see the offensive pictures of strange genitals, but she had the idea that strangers saw her genitals as soon as they were behind her. Footnote 53: Lecture delivered before the Vienna Medic. Doktorenkollegium, on December 12, 1904. Footnote 54: From Löwenfeld, “Sexualleben und Nervenleiden,” IV ed., 1906. Footnote 55: See Chapter VII, and Zur Aetiologie der Hysterie, Wiener, Klinische Rundschau, 1896. Footnote 56: An English translation in preparation. Footnote 57: Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, herausgegeben von Hirschfeld, I, 1908. Footnote 58: Compare Breuer and Freud Studien über Hysterie, 1895. P. Janet, Névroses et ideés fixes, I (Les rêveries subconscientes), 1898. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Impulse and Modesty (German by Kötscher), 1900. Freud, Traumdeutung, 1906, 2d ed., 1909. A. Pick, Über pathologische Träumerei und ihre Beziehungen zur Hysteria, Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, XIV, 1896. Footnote 59: H. Ellis similarly expresses himself, l. c., p. 185. Footnote 60: Compare Freud, Traumdeutung, 2d ed., p. 302. Footnote 61: Compare Freud, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, 1895. Footnote 62: The same thing holds true for the relation between the “latent” thoughts of the dream and the elements of the manifest content of the dream. See the Chapter on the “Work of the Dream” in the author’s Traumdeutung.
Footnote 63: Indeed J. Sadger, who recently discovered this sentence in question, independently by psychoanalysis, claims for it a general validity (Die Bedeutung der psychoanalytische Methode nach Freud, Centralbl. f. Nerv. u. Psych., Nr. 229.) Footnote 64: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Page Changed from Changed to 10 the so called χατ’ εξοχὴν of the so called κατ’ ἐξοχὴν of traumatic hysteria or of a traumatic hysteria or of a series of series of 65 scenes like the one of being scenes like the one of being forced to hold our her hand in forced to hold out her hand in 123 be identified with personel or be identified with personal or hereditary “degeneration.” hereditary “degeneration.” ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.