The Study of Hysteria

Now, after completing my Post Graduate : MA in Counselling and focusing on my present Continuing Professional Development (CPD), where do I find my self experientially? I guess, forever moving forward. Some describe this as the ‘evolution’ of natural development, however, I would rather say the natural development of ‘creation’ to approach and achieve individuation’. An active force that includes spirituality.

Whereas one view presupposes human thinking, the other view that of creation in my view, could suggest that but does suggest a leaning to the appreciation of a God. So why is this all important? The theory of the “id” and its warring factions seems to be a reasonable starting point to pin down conflict for Freud who made some amazing discoveries, including others and modern contemporaries. However, I guess when you consider the ‘origin’ of conflict; it does open up further discussion as to what really is beyond the “id” doesn’t it?

Returning back to the discussion of where do I find my self, and even the word “self” seems to have many interpretations in psychology, so I will say my whole psyche and spirituality. I would say in a place of self acceptance, forgiveness and compassion that there is no need to blame myself for everything that goes wrong in a relationship. However, a scientific approach is that, I can take 100 per cent responsibility for the choices that I make, which might sound sort of contradictatory, but if taken as a convenient belief I can assume that I will make mistakes and learn from them and their is no real gain to punish myself.

So what has all of this got to do with the Study of Hysteria, a term not often used these days? Well one famous person, Jean-Martin Charcot a Neurologist (1870), suggested that Hysteria was normally a neurological problem, that is, nerve damage which he postulated was responsible for a number of physical symptoms. On the other hand, the famous Psychotherapist, Breuer, claimed that hysterical symptoms are ‘symbols’, that is disruptive symbols trapped in the patient’s personality or consciousness of forgotten events, which have produced powerful emotions, that have not been expressed; ‘uttered’. Therefore, it is now generally agreed that hysteria is not necessarily a nerve problem and sometimes there is no neurological evidence of nerve damage, however it most certainly contains, “overwhelming emotions”, such as depression.

Breuer also may have claimed that by expressing the “feeling” through words, gestures etc, what he called the Carthetic Method, the hysterical symptoms could disappear. Freud was their student and after training as a Neurologist with Jean-Martin went on to study Psychotherapy with Breuer and further develop his method of psychotherapy called psychoanalysis, adding his theory of sexual development.

More specifically what does all of this have to do with me? I guess everything in terms of the ‘expressions of symbols’ made here on this blog to do with phantasies, don’t you? That is, especially now that I find myself down the Freud Museum lectures in discussion and debate on psychoanalysis and its broader context of psychotherapy for a deeper understanding of the meaning of trauma.

I cannot begin to describe my fascination of the articulation of the finer details of the effects of trauma of significant events that we bury to forget. For instance, a well known case study by Breuer and co authored by Freud (1880-1882), “Anna O”, was the case that discovered the therapeutic process of talking to a therapist about a past event and the words being repeated back, or as Anna O. would say “chimney sweeping”. My modern assumption  of a type of therapy is “creativity by individuation” that is, through writing there is a possibility that one could achieve something that could amount to a level of carthesis that Breuer discovered that was further developed with Freud’s technique of psychoanalysis.

Although most cases of hysteria were conducted on wealthy women in the 18th Century, it seems to be more widely accepted today that men could have overwhelming emotions too and I am very interested in how this is expressed or unexpressed, particularly in intimate relationships! How are we to forge good internal and external objects, that is, relationships, by not ‘expressing’ to others exactly how we “feel” in an ever increasingly complex worldly system, that can sometimes even be viewed as id driven by the behaviours of an individual in certain situations?

I wonder, what is there to gain from a 'private feeling' of discomfort about an other significant person that the other person is likely to be unaware of.  Where a communication like this is not  transmitted it may amount to a communication with 'no meaning'; when the underlying driver of relationship is usually the desire to forge unity, thus what do we actually get? I wonder if this behaviour has anything to do with feeling ignored and choosing to delete the facts in our deletion communication filter, that 'nothing' was communicated?  I remember reading something similar to this in a book on the school of  the psychologist Adler, I suppose another view of a strategy for 'overwhelming emotions'.  It seems then, as a mental strategy coping mechanism, that some of us talk, some of us write and some us choose to say nothing.

Thanks to the European contribution of Jean-Martin, and Breuer and Freud’s patient case study of Anna O., a highly intelligent woman, we have come that much closer to the human understanding of the dynamics of how previous events or scenes as pictures in our mind that are denied or hidden of a sexual or other nature as now generally agreed can create unresolved conflict.  Later these early conflicts can be triggered by new events which are merely the surface trauma, however, the real operative trauma or 'source of the Nile!', as Freud once said, that may cause an incompatibility of integrating the feeling into the ego may yet be discovered in a much earlier distressing scene.  

Further reading on what existed before psychotherapy and the Eastern contribution to psychotherapy, Rhazes 865-925 CE. A Physician and Scholar, combining Indian medicine, science and religion handed on to Mediaeval Europe.

References

Strachey, J. et al. 1955. The standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume II (1893-1895), Studies of Hysteria : The Hogarth Press, London

Adler, A. 1933. What Life Should Mean To You. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd