Freud - Complete Works (22 page)

   ‘Do you see this scene
clearly before your eyes?’ - ‘As large as life, just as
I experienced it.’ - ‘What could there be about it that
was so agitating?’ - ‘I was moved because the children
were so affectionate to me.’ - ‘Weren’t they
always?’ - 'Yes - but just when I got the letter from my
mother.’ - ‘I don’t understand why there is a
contrast between the children’s affection and your
mother’s letter, for that’s what you seem to be
suggesting.’ - ‘I was intending to go back to my
mother’s, and the thought of leaving the dear children made
me feel so sad.’ - ‘What’s wrong with your
mother? Has she been feeling lonely and sent for you? Or was she
ill at the time, and were you expecting news of her?’ -
‘No; she isn’t very strong, but she’s not exactly
ill, and she has a companion with her.’ - ‘Then why
must you leave the children?’ - 'I couldn’t bear it
any longer in the house. The housekeeper, the cook and the French
governess seem to have thought that I was putting myself above my
station. They joined in a little intrigue against me and said all
sorts of things against me to the children’s grandfather, and
I didn’t get as much support as I had expected from the two
gentlemen when I complained to them. So I gave notice to the
Director’ (the children’s father). ‘He answered
in a very friendly way that I had better think the matter over for
a couple of weeks before I finally gave him my decision. I was in
this state of uncertainty at the time, and thought I should be
leaving the house; but I have stayed on.’ - ‘ Was there
something particular, apart from their fondness for you, which
attached you to the children?’ - ‘Yes. Their mother was
a distant relation of my mother’s, and I had promised her on
her death-bed that I would devote myself with all my power to the
children, that I would not leave them and that I would take their
mother’s place with them. In giving notice I had broken this
promise.’

   This seemed to complete the
analysis of the patient’s subjective sensation of smell. It
had turned out in fact to have been an objective sensation
originally, and one which was intimately associated with an
experience - a little scene - in which opposing affects had been in
conflict with each other: her regret at leaving the children and
the slights which were nevertheless urging her to make up her mind
to do so. Her mother’s letter had not unnaturally reminded
her of her reasons for this decision, since it was her intention to
join her mother on leaving here. The conflict between her affects
had elevated the moment of the letter’s arrival into a
trauma, and the sensation of smell that was associated with this
trauma persisted as its symbol. It was still necessary to explain
why, out of all the sense-perceptions afforded by the scene, she
had chosen this smell as a symbol. I was already prepared, however,
to use the chronic affection of her nose as a help in explaining
the point. In response to a direct question she told me that just
at that time she had once more been suffering from such a heavy
cold in the nose that she could hardly smell anything.
Nevertheless, while she was in her state of agitation she perceived
the smell of the burnt pudding, which broke through the organically
determined loss of her sense of smell.

Studies On Hysteria

102

   But I was not satisfied with the
explanation thus arrived at. It all sounded highly plausible, but
there was something that I missed, some adequate reason why these
agitations and this conflict of affects should have led to hysteria
rather than anything else. Why had not the whole thing remained on
the level of normal psychical life? In other words, what was the
justification for the conversion which occurred? Why did she not
always call to mind the scene itself, instead of the associated
sensation which she singled out as a symbol of the recollection
Such questions might be over-curious and superfluous if we were
dealing with a hysteric of long standing in whom the mechanism of
conversion was habitual. But it was not until this trauma, or at
any rate this small tale of trouble, that the girl had acquired
hysteria.

   Now I already knew from the
analysis of similar cases that before hysteria can be acquired for
the first time one essential condition must be fulfilled: an idea
must be
intentionally repressed from consciousness
and
excluded from associative modification. In my view this intentional
repression is also the basis for the conversion, whether total or
partial, of the sum of excitation. The sum of excitation, being cut
off from psychical association, finds its way all the more easily
along the wrong path to a somatic innervation. The basis for
repression itself can only be a feeling of unpleasure, the
incompatibility between the single idea that is to be repressed and
the dominant mass of ideas constituting the ego. The repressed idea
takes its revenge, however, by becoming pathogenic.

Studies On Hysteria

103

   I accordingly inferred from Miss
Lucy R.’s having succumbed to hysterical conversion at the
moment in question that among the determinants of the trauma there
must have been one which she had sought intentionally to leave in
obscurity and had made efforts to forget. If her fondness for the
children and her sensitiveness on the subject of the other members
of the household were taken together, only one conclusion could be
reached. I was bold enough to inform my patient of this
interpretation. I said to her: ‘I cannot think that these are
all the reasons for your feelings about the children. I believe
that really you are in love with your employer, the Director,
though perhaps without being aware of it yourself, and that you
have a secret hope of taking their mother’s place in actual
fact. And then we must remember the sensitiveness you now feel
towards the servants, after having lived with them peacefully for
years. You’re afraid of their having some inkling of your
hopes and making fun of you.’

   She answered in her usual laconic
fashion: ‘Yes, I think that’s true.’ - ‘But
if you knew you loved your employer why didn’t you tell
me?’ - ‘I didn’t know - or rather I didn’t
want to know. I wanted to drive it out of my head and not think of
it again; and I believe latterly I have
succeeded.’¹  ‘Why is it that you were
unwilling to admit this inclination? Where you ashamed of loving a
man?’ - ‘Oh no, I’m not unreasonably prudish.
We’re not responsible for our feelings, anyhow. It is
distressing to me only because he is my employer and I am in his
service and live in his house. I don’t feel the same complete
independence towards him that I could towards anyone else. And then
I am only a poor girl and he is such a rich man of good family.
People would laugh at me if they had any idea of it.’

  
¹
I have never managed to give a better
description than this of the strange state of mind in which one
knows and does not know a thing at the same time. It is clearly
impossible to understand it unless one has been in such a state
oneself. I myself have had a very remarkable experience of this
sort, which is still clearly before me. If I try to recollect what
went on in my mind at the time I can get hold of very little. What
happened was that I saw something which did not fit in at all with
my expectation; yet I did not allow what I saw to disturb my fixed
plan in the least, though the perception should have put a stop to
it. I was unconscious of any contradiction in this; nor was I aware
of my feelings of repulsion, which must nevertheless undoubtedly
have been responsible for the perception producing no psychical
effect. I was afflicted by that blindness of the seeing eye which
is so astonishing in the attitude of mothers to their daughters,
husbands to their wives and rulers to their favourites.

Studies On Hysteria

104

   She now showed no resistance to
throwing light on the origin of this inclination. She told me that
for the first few years she had lived happily in the house,
carrying out her duties and free from any unfulfillable wishes. One
day, however, her employer, a serious, overworked man whose
behaviour towards her had always been reserved, began a discussion
with her on the lines along which children should be brought up. He
unbent more and was more cordial than usual and told her how much
he depended on her for looking after his orphaned children; and as
he said this he looked at her meaningly. . . . Her love for him had
begun at that moment, and she even allowed herself to dwell on the
gratifying hopes which she had based on this talk. But when there
was no further development, and when she had waited in vain for a
second hour’s intimate exchange of views, she decided to
banish the whole business from her mind. She entirely agreed with
me that the look she had caught during their conversation had
probably sprung from his thoughts about his wife, and she
recognized quite clearly that there was no prospect of her feelings
for him meeting with any return.

   I expected that this discussion
would bring about a fundamental change in her condition. But for
the time being this did not occur. She continued to be in low
spirits and depressed. She felt somewhat refreshed in the mornings
by a course of hydropathic treatment which I prescribed for her at
the same time. The smell of burnt pudding did not disappear
completely, though it became less frequent and weaker. It only came
on, she said, when she was very much agitated. The persistence of
this mnemic symbol led me to suspect that, in addition to the main
scene, it had taken over the representation of the many minor
traumas subsidiary to that scene. We therefore looked about for
anything else that might have to do with the scene of the burnt
pudding; we went into the subject of the domestic friction, the
grandfather’s behaviour, and so on, and as we did so the
burnt smell faded more and more. During this time, too, the
treatment was interrupted for a considerable while, owing to a
fresh attack of her nasal disorder, and this now led to the
discovery of the caries of the ethmoid.

   On her return she reported that
at Christmas she had received a great many presents from the two
gentlemen of the house and even from the servants, as though they
were all anxious to make it up with her and to wipe out her memory
of the conflicts of the last few months. But these signs of
goodwill had not made any impression on her.

Studies On Hysteria

105

   When I enquired once more about
the smell of burnt pudding, she informed me that it had quite
disappeared but that she was being bothered by another, similar
smell, resembling cigar-smoke. It had been there earlier as well,
she thought, but had, as it were, been covered by the smell of the
pudding. Now it had emerged by itself.

   I was not very well satisfied
with the results of the treatment. What had happened was precisely
what is always brought up against purely symptomatic treatment: I
had removed one symptom only for its place to be taken by another.
Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to set about the task of getting
rid of this new mnemic symbol by analysis.

   But this time she did not know
where the subjective olfactory sensation came from - on what
important occasion it had been an objective one. ‘People
smoke every day in our house,’ she said, ‘and I really
don’t know whether the smell I notice refers to some special
occasion.’ I then insisted that she should try to remember
under the pressure of my hand. I have already mentioned that her
memories had the quality of plastic vividness, that she was a
‘visual’ type. And in fact, at my insistence, a picture
gradually emerged before her, hesitatingly and piecemeal to begin
with. It was the dining-room in her house, where she was waiting
with the children for the two gentlemen to return to luncheon from
the factory. ‘Now we are all sitting round the table, the
gentlemen, the French governess, the housekeeper, the children and
myself. But that’s like what happens every day.’ -
‘Go on looking at the picture; it will develop and become
more specialized.’ - ‘Yes, there is a guest. It’s
the chief accountant. He’s an old man and he is as fond of
the children as though they were his own grandchildren. But he
comes to lunch so often that there’s nothing special in that
either.’ - ‘Be patient and just keep looking at the
picture; some thing’s sure to happen.’ -
‘Nothing’s happening. We’re getting up from the
table; the children say their good-byes, and they go upstairs with
us as usual to the second floor.’ - ‘And then?’ -
'It
is
a special occasion, after all. I recognize the
scene now. As the children say good-bye, the accountant tries to
kiss them. My employer flares up and actually shouts at him:
"Don’t kiss the children!" I feel a stab at my
heart; and as the gentlemen are already smoking, the cigar-smoke
sticks in my memory.’

Studies On Hysteria

106

   This, then, was a second and
deeper-lying scene which, like the first, operated as a trauma and
left a mnemic symbol behind it. But to what did this scene owe its
effectiveness? ‘Which of the two scenes was the
earlier,’ I asked, ‘this one or the one with the burnt
pudding?’ - ‘The scene I have just told you about was
the earlier, by almost two months.’ - ‘Then why did you
feel this stab when the children’s father stopped the old
man? His reprimand wasn’t aimed at you.’ - ‘It
wasn’t right of him to shout at an old man who was a valued
friend of his and, what’s more, a guest. He could have said
it quietly.’ - ‘So it was only the violent way he put
it that hurt you? Did you feel embarrassed on his account? Or
perhaps you thought: "If he can be so violent about such a
small thing with an old friend and guest, how much more so might he
be with me if I were his wife".’ - ‘No,
that’s not it.’ - ‘But it had to do with his
violence, hadn’t it?’ - ‘Yes, about the children
being kissed. He has never liked that.’