Freud - Complete Works (36 page)

   If, however, the affect can find
no discharge of excitation of any kind along these lines, then the
situation is the same with anger as with fright and anxiety. The
intracerebral excitation is powerfully increased, but is employed
neither in associative nor in motor activity. In normal people the
disturbance is gradually levelled out. But in some, abnormal
reactions appear, An ‘abnormal expression of the
emotions’, as Oppenheim says, is formed.

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(3)  HYSTERICAL CONVERSION

   I shall scarcely be suspected of
identifying nervous excitation with electricity, if I return once
more to the comparison with an electrical system. If the tension in
such a system becomes excessively high, there is danger of a break
occurring at weak points in the insulation. Electrical phenomena
then appear at abnormal points; or, if two wires lie close beside
each other, there is a short circuit. Since a permanent change has
been produced at these points, the disturbance thus brought about
may constantly recur if the tension is sufficiently increased. An
abnormal ‘facilitation’ has taken place.

   That the conditions applying in
the nervous system are to some extent similar can well be
maintained. It forms throughout an interconnected whole; but at
many points in it great, though not insurmountable, resistances are
interposed, which prevent the general, uniform distribution of
excitation. Thus in normal people in a waking state excitation in
the organ of ideation does not pass over to the organs of
perception: such people do not hallucinate. In the interests of the
safety and efficiency of the organism, the nervous apparatuses of
the complexes of organs which are of vital importance - the
circulatory and digestive organs - are separated by strong
resistances from the organs of ideation. Their independence is
assured. They are not affected directly by ideas. But the
resistances which prevent the passage of intracerebral excitation
to the circulatory and digestive apparatuses vary in strength from
one individual to another. All degrees of affective excitability
are to be found between, on the one hand, the ideal (which is
rarely met with to-day) of a man who is absolutely free from
‘nerves’, whose heart-action remains constant in every
situation and is only affected by the particular work it has to
perform, the man who has a good appetite and digestion, whatever
danger he is in - between a man of this kind and, on the other
hand, a ‘nervous’ man who has palpitations and
diarrhoea on the smallest provocation.

   However this may be, there are
resistances in normal people against the passage of cerebral
excitation to the vegetative organs. These resistances correspond
to the insulation of electrical conducting lines. At points at
which they are abnormally weak they are broken through when the
tension of cerebral excitation is high, and this - the affective
excitation - passes over to the peripheral organs. There ensues an
‘abnormal expression of emotion’.

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   Of the two factors which we have
mentioned as being responsible for this result, one has already
been discussed by us in detail. This first factor is a high degree
of intracerebral excitation which has failed to be levelled down
either by ideational activities or by motor discharge, or which is
too great to be dealt with in this way.

   The second factor is an abnormal
weakness of the resistances in particular paths of conduction. This
may be determined by the individual’s initial constitution
(innate disposition); or it may be determined by states of
excitation of long duration which, as one might say, loosen the
whole structure of his nervous system and lower all its resistances
(pubertal disposition); or it may be determined by weakening
influences, such as illness and under-nourishment (disposition due
to states of exhaustion). The resistance of particular paths of
conduction may be lowered by a previous illness of the organ
concerned which has facilitated the paths to and from the brain. A
diseased heart is more susceptible to the influence of an affect
than is a healthy one. ‘I have a sounding-board in my
abdomen’, I was told by a woman who suffered from
parametritis, ‘if anything happens, it starts up my old
pain.’ (Disposition through local illness.)

   The motor actions in which the
excitation of affects is normally discharged are ordered and
co-ordinated even though they are often useless. But an excessively
strong excitation may by-pass or break through the co-ordinative
centres and flow off in primitive movements. In infants, apart from
the respiratory action of screaming, affects only produce and find
expression in uncoordinated contractions of the muscles of this
primitive kind - in arching the body and kicking about. As
development proceeds, the musculature passes more and more under
the control of the power of co-ordination and the will. But the
opisthotonus, which represents the maximum of motor effort of the
total somatic musculature, and the clonic movements of kicking and
threshing about, persist throughout life as the form of reaction
for the maximal excitation of the brain for the purely physical
excitation in epileptic attacks as well as for the discharge of
maximal affects in the shape of more or less epileptoid convulsions
(viz. the purely motor part of hysterical attacks).

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   It is true that abnormal
affective reactions of this kind are characteristic of hysteria.
But they also occur apart from that illness. What they indicate is
a more or less high degree of nervous disorder, not hysteria. Such
phenomena cannot be described as hysterical if they appear as
consequences of an affect which, though of great intensity, has an
objective basis, but only if they appear with apparent spontaneity
as manifestations of an illness. These latter, as many
observations, including our own, have shown, are based on
recollections which revive the original affect - or rather,
which would revive it if those reactions did not, in fact, occur
instead
.

   It may be taken for granted that
a stream of ideas and recollections runs through the consciousness
of any reasonably intelligent person while his mind is at rest.
These ideas are so little vivid that they leave no trace behind in
the memory and it is impossible afterwards to say how the
associations occurred. If, however, an idea comes up that
originally had a strong affect attached to it, that affect is
revived with more or less intensity. The idea which is thus
‘coloured’ by affect emerges in consciousness clearly
and vividly. The strength of the affect which can be released by a
memory is very variable, according to the amount to which it has
been exposed to ‘wearing-away’ by different influences,
and especially according to the degree to which the original affect
has been ‘abreacted’. We pointed out in our
‘Preliminary Communication’ to what a varying extent
the affect of anger at an insult, for instance, is called up by a
recollection, according to whether the insult has been repaid or
endured in silence. If the psychical reflex was fully achieved on
the original occasion, the recollection of it releases a far
smaller quantity of excitation.¹ If not, the recollection is
perpetually forcing on to the subject’s lips the abusive
words which were originally suppressed and which would have been
the psychical reflex to the original stimulus.

  
¹
The instinct of revenge, which is so
powerful in the natural man and is disguised rather than repressed
by civilization, is nothing whatever but the excitation of a reflex
that has not been released. To defend oneself against injury in a
fight and, in doing so, to injure one’s opponent is the
adequate and preformed psychical reflex. If it has been carried out
insufficiently or not at all, it is constantly released again by
recollection, and the ‘instinct of revenge’ comes into
being as an irrational volitional impulse, just as do all other
‘instincts’. The proof of this lies precisely in the
irrationality of the impulse, its divorce from any question of
usefulness or expediency, indeed in its disregard of all
considerations of the subject’s own safety. As soon as the
reflex has been released, the irrational nature of the impulse can
become conscious.

                                                               
Ein andres Antlitz, eh sie geschehen,

                                                               
Ein anderes zeigt die vollbrachte Tat.

  
[Literally: ‘A deed shows one countenance before it has
happened and another after it has been
accomplished.’]

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   If the original affect was
discharged not in a normal but in an ‘abnormal’ reflex,
this latter is equally released by recollection. The excitation
arising from the affective idea is ‘converted’ (Freud)
into a somatic phenomenon.

   Should this abnormal reflex
become completely facilitated by frequent repetition, it may, it
seems, drain away the operative force of the releasing ideas so
totally that the affect itself emerges to a minimal extent only, or
not at all. In such a case the ‘hysterical conversion’
is complete. The idea, moreover, which now no longer produces any
psychical consequences, may be overlooked by the subject, or may be
promptly forgotten if it emerges, like any other idea which is
unaccompanied by affect.

   It may be easier to accept the
possibility of a cerebral excitation which should have given rise
to an idea being replaced in this way by an excitation of some
peripheral path, if we call to mind the inverse course of events
which follows when a preformed reflex fails to occur. I will select
an extremely trivial example - the sneezing reflex. If a stimulus
of the mucous membrane of the nose fails for any reason to release
this preformed reflex, a feeling of excitation and tension arises,
as we all know. The excitation, which has been unable to flow off
along motor paths, now, inhibiting all other activity, spreads over
the brain. This everyday example gives us the pattern of what
happens when a psychical reflex, even the most complicated one,
fails to occur. The excitement which we have discussed above as
characteristic of the instinct of revenge is in essentials the
same. And we can follow the same process even up to the highest
regions of human achievement. Goethe did not feel he had dealt with
an experience till he had discharged it in creative artistic
activity. This was in his case the preformed reflex belonging to
affects, and so long as it had not been carried out the distressing
increase in his excitation persisted.

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   Intracerebral excitation and the
excitatory process in peripheral paths are of reciprocal
magnitudes: the former increases if and so long as no reflex is
released; it diminishes and disappears when it has been transformed
into peripheral nervous excitation. Thus it seems understandable
that no observable affect is generated if the idea that should have
given rise to it immediately releases an abnormal reflex into which
the excitation flows away as soon as it is generated. The
‘hysterical conversion’ is then complete. The original
intracerebral excitation belonging to the affect has been
transformed into the excitatory process in the peripheral paths.
What was originally an affective idea now no longer provokes the
affect but only the abnormal reflex.¹

   We have now gone a step beyond
the ‘abnormal expression of the emotions’. Hysterical
phenomena (abnormal reflexes) do not seem to be ideogenic even to
intelligent patients who are good observers, because the idea that
gave rise to them is no longer coloured with affect and no longer
marked out among other ideas and memories. They emerge as purely
somatic phenomena, apparently without psychical roots.

  
¹
I am anxious not to drive the analogy with
an electrical system to death. In view of the totally dissimilar
conditions it can scarcely illustrate the processes in the nervous
system, and can certainly not explain them. But I may once more
recall the case in which, owing to excessively high tension, the
insulation of the wires in a lighting system breaks down and a
‘short circuit’ occurs at some point in it. If
electrical phenomena (such as overheating or sparking) occur at
this point, the lamp to which the wire leads fails to light. In
just the same way, the affect fails to appear if the excitation
flows away in an abnormal reflex and is converted into a somatic
phenomenon.

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   What is it that determines the
discharge of affect in such a way that one particular abnormal
reflex is produced rather than some other?  Our observations
answer this question in many instances by showing that here again
the discharge follows the ‘principle of least
resistance’ and takes place along those paths whose
resistances have already been weakened by concurrent circumstances.
This covers the case which we have already mentioned of a
particular reflex being facilitated by already-existing somatic
illness. If, for instance, someone suffers often from cardiac
pains, these will also be provoked by affects. Alternatively, a
reflex may be facilitated by the fact that the muscular innervation
concerned was deliberately intended at the moment at which the
affect originally occurred. Thus, Anna O. (in our first case
history) tried, in her fright, to stretch out her right arm that
had gone to sleep owing to pressure against the back of the chair,
in order to ward off the snake; and from that time on the tetanus
in her right arm was provoked by the sight of any snake-like
object. Or again, in her emotion, she brought her eyes forcibly
together in order to read the hands of the watch, and thereupon a
convergent squint became one of the reflexes of that affect. And so
on.