Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/133

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THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF HYSTERIA.
119

associative force prevailing in consciousness the existing wish became connected with my own person, with which the patient could naturally occupy herself, and in this mesalliance—which I call a false connection—the same affect became reawakened which originally urged the patient to banish this clandestine wish. As soon as I discovered this I could presuppose every similar claim on my personality to be another transference and false connection. It is remarkable how the patient falls a victim to deception on every new occasion.

No analysis can be brought to an end if one does not know how to meet the resistances resulting from the causes mentioned. The way can be found if one bears in mind that the new symptom produced after the old model should be treated like the old symptoms. In the first place it is necessary to make the patient conscious of the obstacle. In one of my patients, in whom the pressure symptoms suddenly failed and I had cause to assume an unconscious idea like the one mentioned in 2, I met it for the first time with an unexpected attack. I told her that there must have originated some obstacle against the continuation of the treatment and that the pressure procedure has at least the power to show her the obstacle, and then pressed her head. She then said, surprisingly, "I see you sitting here on the chair, but that is nonsense, what can that mean?"—But now I could explain it.

In another patient the obstacle did not usually show itself directly on pressure, but I could always demonstrate it by taking the patient back to the moment in which it originated. The pressure procedure never failed to bring back this moment. By discovering and demonstrating the obstacle, the first difficulty was removed, but a greater one still remained. The difficulty lay in inducing the patient to give information where there was an obvious personal relation and where the third person coincided with the physician. At first I was very much annoyed about the increase of this psychic work until I had learned to see the lawful part of this whole process, and I then also noticed that such a transference does not cause any considerable increase in the work. The work of the patient remained the same, she perhaps had to overcome the painful affect of having entertained such a wish, and it seemed to be the same for the success whether she took this psychic repulsion as a theme of the work in the historical