In this relationship and in the scene caused by it, I was to seek the causation of the first hysterical pain. A conflict, or a state of incompatibility arose through the contrast between the happiness which she had not at that time denied herself and the sad condition in which she found her father upon her arrival home. As a result of this conflict the erotic presentations were repressed from the associations and the affect connected with them was made use of in aggravating or reviving a simultaneously (or somewhat previously) existing physical pain. It was therefore the mechanism of a conversion for the purpose of defense as I have shown circumstantially in another place.[1]
To be sure, we have room here for all kinds of observations. I must assert that I was unsuccessful in demonstrating from her memory that the conversion took place in the moment of her returning home. I therefore investigated for similar experiences which might have occurred while she was nursing her father, and I evoked a number of scenes, among which was one during which she had to jump out of bed with bare feet in a cold room to respond to the repeated calls of her father. I was inclined to attribute to this moment a certain significance, for in addition to complaining of pain in her legs she also complained of tormenting sensations of coldness. Nevertheless, here too I could not with certainty lay hold of the scene which could be indicated as the scene of conversion. This led me to admit that there was here some gap, when I recalled the fact that the hysterical pains in the legs were really not present at the time she nursed her father. From her memory she recalled only a single attack of pain lasting a few days to which at that time she paid no attention. I then directed my attention to the first appearance of the pains. In this respect I was successful in awakening a perfect memory. They came on just at the time of a relative's visit whom she could not receive because she was ill in bed, and who had the misfortune to find her ill in bed on another occasion two years later. But the search for the psychic motive of these first pains failed as often as repeated. I believed that I could assume that these first pains were due to a slight rheumatic attack and really had no psychic basis, and I also discovered that this organic
- ↑ Die Abwehr-Neuropsychosen, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1 June, 1894.
