9 ^ be 'afraid of the subject's distrust and laughter'.

Freud followed the reviews of Bernheim and Forel with two papers on the technique of hypnotism - 'Hypnosis'

(1891)26 and 'A case of successful treatment by

(23) Freud, S. (1889) Review of August Forel's Hypnotism. S E 1 . 98.

(24) Freud, S. (1889). Review of August Forel's Hypnotism.

S E 1 ,99.

(25) Freud, S. (1889). Review of August Forel's

Hypnotism. S E 1 .99 .

77

hypnotism'. (1892-93) In these papers, Freud developed the notion of autosuggestion emphasising the 'counter-will' of the subject which resulted from the influence of

'distressing antithetic' ideas. 'The antithetic idea establishes itself, so to speak, as a "counter-will",

while the patient is aware with astonishment of having a will which is resolute but powerless.'28 Freud observed that the distressing antithetic idea seemed to be inhibited since it was removed from association with the intention and yet continued to exist as a disconnected idea through a 'dissociation of consciousness. ' What struck Freud as remarkable was not the physician's suggestions of ideas but rather that the patient under hypnosis had 'access ...(without there being any necessity to suggest the idea to her ) to the whole store of her memories - or, as I should prefer to put it, to the whole extent of her consciousness, which was restricted in

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waking l i f e ' .

Having gained access to this area of consciousness through the revised hypnotic method, Freud turned to the investigation of the content of the dissociated ideas. In his Preface and Footnotes to the Translation of Charcot's

Tuesday Lectures (1892-94), Freud wrote: the 'content of the memory is as a rule either a psychical trauma. . . or is an event which, owing to its occurrence at a particular moment, has become a trauma.'30 For an event to 'become' a trauma, the subject must be in a particular mental state and have a disposition towards such states. The hysterical disposition was characterised by 'hypnoid states'. In hypnoid states, 'the content of consciousness easily becomes temporarily dissociated and certain

(27) Freud, S. (1892-93). A case of successful treatment by hypnotism. SE1,117-128.

(28) Freud, S. (1892-93). A case of successful treatment by hypnotism. S E 1 .122.

(29) Freud, S. (1892-93). A case of successful treatment by hypnotism. SE1, 124.

(30) Freud, S . (1892-94). Preface and footnotes to the translation of Charcot's Tuesday Lectures. S E 1 .137.

complexes of ideas which are not associatively connected easily fly apart'.31 In persons of a hysterical disposition, any affect could give rise to a splitting of this kind so that an 1 impression received during the affect would thus become a trauma even though it was not in itself appropriate for acting as one.'32 Thus, Freud explained the onset of a hysterical attack by the p r e ­ existing condition of 'the presence of a dissociation - a splitting of the content of consciousness'. J

As regards the content of the dissociated ideas, Freud noted that sexual life was 'especially well suited to provide the content [of such traumas] owing to the very great contrast it presents to the rest of the personality and to its ideas being impossible to react to.'34 Thus, the process of dissociation and the content of the dissociated ideas interacted with one another to create the illness of hysteria. Freud now added a new procedure to his hypnotic method; in order to re-dress the dissoci­ ated state, ideas must be subjected to 'abreac t i o n ', a term Freud borrowed from his colleague and collaborator, Josef Breuer. It was not sufficient for the therapist to simply gain access to the auto-suggestions, he must also abreact the results of the ideas 'either by reviving the trauma...and then abreacting and correcting it, or by bringing it into normal consciousness under comparatively light hypnosis'. Through this shift in technique, Freud introduced two aspects of his therapy which have remained central to the psychoanalytic method: one, that understanding is only therapeutic when accompanied by feeling; two, that psychoanalysis is in the words of Breuer's patient, Anna 0, 'a talking c u r e 1.

(31) Freud, S. (1940-41[1892]). Sketches for the 'Preliminary Communication' of 1893. S E 1 .149.

(32) Freud, S. (1940-41[1892]). Sketches for the 'preliminary communication' of 1893. SE1, 150.

(33) Freud, S .(1940-41[1892]). Sketches for the 'preliminary communication1 of 1893. S E 1 .151.

(34) Freud, S. (1940-41[1892 ]) . Sketches for the 'preliminary communication1 of 1893. S E 1 ,150.

The fact that the dissociated ideas exerted a powerful influence on the person's daily life led Freud to posit a place or area of the mind in which such ideas existed in a dormant state (akin to the state of sleep) - this he called the 'second state of consciousness'. 'If a hysterical subject seeks intentionally to forget an experience or forcibly repudiates, inhibits and suppresses

an intention or an idea, these psychical acts, as a

consequence, enter the second state of consciousness; from there they produce their permanent effects and the memory of them returns as a hysterical attack.' 'The memory which forms the content of a hysterical attack is an unconscious one; or, more correctly, it is part of the second state of consciousness which is present, organized to a greater

or less degree, in every hysteria.'35 Examples of such

attacks were hysteria in nuns, continent women, and well brought-up boys. The psychical experiences which formed the content of their hysterical attacks were impressions which had failed to find adequate discharge - i.e. which had not been sufficiently abreacted. Freud believed that

o f,: every psychical impression accrued a 'quota of affect' of which the ego must divest itself either through motor reaction or by associative psychical activity. The task of therapy was to set in train the failed process of abreaction, thereby liberating the quota of affect attached to the psychical trauma and undoing the 'fixation' through 'conscious psychical activity'. The goal and method of treatment was to reverse the pathogenic process which had led to the hysteria.

When Freud first adopted B r e u e r 's abreactive method, he believed that the patient's hysterical symptoms would immediately and permanently disappear when 'we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light the memory of the event by which it was provoked and in arousing its

(35) Freud, S. (1940-41[1892]) . Sketches for the 'preliminary communication' of 1893. S E 1 ,153.

(36) Freud, S. (1893 [1888-1893]) . Some points for a comparative study of organic and hysterical motor paralyses. SE1,172.

accompanying affect, and when the patient had described that event in the greatest possible detail and had put the

q y

affect into w o r d s 1. However, Freud soon encountered

various major obstacles: in addition to the patient's resistance to uncovering the material which underlay his symptoms, Freud encountered 'the worst obstacle we can come across' - namely the patient's 'disturbed' relationship to the doctor.38 Freud reckoned that this obstacle would arise 'in every comparatively serious analysis.' Freud found that the very features on which he had relied in order to overcome the patient's resistance - namely the doctor's 'friendliness' and 'trouble over' the patient - failed to elicit the cooperativeness which would moderate resistances. Instead, the patient refused to continue the investigation since she was 'held up by an intervening consciousness of the complaints against the physician that have been

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accumulating m her.'

Freud questioned the sources of these complaints: the patient might feel neglected by the doctor; she might fear her dependence upon him or she might be 'frightened at finding that she is transferring on to the figure of the physician the distressing ideas which arise from the content of the analysis.' It is possible to read this passage as implying an awareness on the part of the patient that she was transferring feelings from one situation to another. However, Freud made no explicit statement of this awareness, suggesting more simply that the patient felt a repugnance towards the feelings which came up in relation to the physician. Freud postulated that this 'transference' on to the physician took place

(37) Freud,S. (1895) The psychotherapy of hysteria. S E 2 . p . 255.

(38) Freud, S. (1895). The psychotherapy of hysteria. S E 2 , p 3 01.

(39) Freud, S . (1895) The psychotherapy of hysteria (Freud). S E 2 , p,301.

through a 1mesalliance' or 'false connection'40 between the past situation in which the distressing ideas arose and the figure of the doctor in the present therapeutic situation. As an example of this type of mesalliance, Freud described the behaviour of a patient who had an unconscious wish that the man she was talking to would give her a kiss. In analysis, this wish produced a resistance since the patient failed to connect the wish with the memories of the original surrounding circumstances which would have assigned it to past time. Instead, because of ’a compulsion to associate', the patient linked the wish to Freud. Furthermore, she connected her original repudiation of this wish to the analytic situation, thereby reproducing this same affect in the form of resistance to the process of free association.

At first, Freud felt 'greatly annoyed at the increase'41 the transference made upon his psychological work. But he noticed that the whole process followed a law and that transference brought about no great addition to what he had to do. While the patient still had to overcome the distress attached to entertaining certain wishes, it made little difference to the doctor whether the repudiation of the wish was placed in its historical context or attached to the recent situation with the doctor. The mesalliance of ideas was temporary. At that time, Freud believed that the compulsions and illusions which resulted in the transference onto the physician would dissolve with the conclusion of the treatment. In fact, Freud had already experienced the impact of the transference when working as a hypnotist. He later re­ marked that under hypnosis, the patient endowed the physician 'with an authority such as was probably never possessed by the priest or the miracle man' precisely

(40) Freud, S. (1895). The psychotherapy of hysteria (Freud). S E 2 , p . 302-303.

(41) Freud, S . (1895). The psychotherapy of hysteria. SE2 ,304.

because the subject's whole interest was concentrated upon the figure of the physician.42

When Freud replaced the verb 'transferring from' with the noun 'transference', he gave a technical designation to the term transference. Prior to the Studies on Hysteria, Freud used the verb 'carrying over' to refer to shifts in energy flow. The introduction of the nominative form - transference - suggested a complex process through which past ideas were associated with ideas in present time. However, in his early writings, Freud's past extended backwards only to fairly recent events; for in­ stance, in the case of Fraulein Elisabeth von R . , 43 the revived memories were of events during her adolescence. The past did not refer to the distant past of early childhood or infancy.

Freud now turned his attention away from the two states of consciousness to the mechanism or agency which maintained their separation or dissociation. In the fifteen years between 1887 and 1902, Freud wrote many letters to his friend Willhelm Fliess, a nose and throat specialist living in Berlin. This correspondence which includes papers and organised accounts of Freud's developing views spans the years when Freud was forming many of his most fundamental psychoanalytic theories. In one of these 'drafts' to Fliess, Freud discussed what he called the Neuroses of Defence. Freud assigned a crucial role and place to defences in the development of neuroses. Freud outlined the course of the neuroses beginning first with the original traumatic experience (which was usually of a sexual nature), second, the subsequent repression of the experience on a later occasion in which the memory of the experience is aroused and, third, a stage of 'successful defence, which is equivalent to health except

(42) Freud, S . (1905). Psychical (or mental) treatment. SE7,p.298.

(43) Freud, S. (1893-95). Studies on Hysteria. S E 2 , 135- 181.

for the existence of the primary s y m p t o m 1.44 Freud's introduction of the notion of defence in the treatment and course of development of neuroses replaced the earlier horizontal model with a layered or stratified model of the mind. Originally, Freud attempted to fill in the intermediate stages between the external, manifest symptom and the preceding psychical idea. Now, he told Fliess:

'As you know, I am working on the assumption that our psychical mechanism has come into being by a process of stratification: the material present in the form of memory-traces being subjected from time to time to a r e ­ arrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances - to a

re-transcription. Thus what is essentially new about my

theory is the thesis that memory is present not once but several times over, that it is laid down in various species of indications.'45

From the conception of memory as multi-layered, in which memories could be rearranged or retranscribed, it was a small step to the notion of 'phantasy'. Now Freud assigned phantasy the central role previously played by memory in the structure of hysteria. In a letter to Fliess written in May 1897, Freud wrote: 'Everything goes back to the reproduction of scenes, some of which can be arrived at directly, but others always by way of phantasies set up in front of them. The phantasies are derived from things that have been heard but understood subsequently

and all their material is, of course, genuine. They are protective structures, sublimations of the facts, embellishments of them, and at the same time serve for self-exoneration.'46 Moreover, Freud claimed, the psychical structures which were affected by repression in hysteria were not in fact memories but impulses which

(44) Freud, S. (1950[1892-1899]) . Extracts from the Fliess papers. Draft K (enclosed in Letter 39, January 1st 1896) . SE1,222.

(45) Freud, S. (1950[1892-1899]) . Extracts from the Fleiss papers. Letter 52, December 6 1896, S E 1 .233.

(46) Freud, S. (1950[1892-1899]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. Letter 61, May 2 1897, 247.

arose from the primal scenes. Freud postulated a close relation between impulses and phantasies because of the apparent 'bifurcation of memories'. One part of them 'is put aside and replaced by phantasies' while 'another, more accessible, part seems to lead directly to impulses.'47 Foremost amongst the memories which were put aside and replaced by phantasies are 'hostile impulses against

• dft

parents (a wish that they should die...' These form an integral constituent of neuroses. It was in connection with these phantasies that Freud again introduced the idea of 'transference'. He described the death-wishes that daughters direct against their mothers, illustrating this observation by the example of a maid-servant who 'makes a transference from this by wishing her mistress to die so

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that her master can marry her.' In this example, Freud described the process through which the original wish is transferred - set aside and replaced - by a phantasy wish.

Freud's distinction between phantasy and memory together with his introduction of a stratified model of the mind led to a radical reassessment of the trauma theory. (Though Freud explicitly stated his abandonment of this theory, many thinkers have pointed out that aspects of the trauma theory were implicit in later formulations.) In a letter to Fliess (1897), Freud confided the 'great secret' which had been slowly dawning on him: 'I no longer believe in my neurotica [theory of the neuroses]'.50 Freud now believed that his phantasy hypothesis which accounted for the apparent frequency of sexual perversion in fathers was confirmed by his clinical

(47) Freud, S. Extracts from the Fleiss papers (1950[1892- 1899]). Draft N, enclosed in letter 64, May 31 1897. SE,255.

(48) Freud, S .(1950[1892-1899]). Extracts from the Fleiss papers, Draft N, 254.

(49) Freud, S. (1950[1892-1899]) . Extracts from the Fleiss papers, Draft N,255.

(50) Freud, S. Extracts from the Fliess papers. (1950[1892-1899]) . Letter 69, August 14 1897. SE1,259.

practice and by his self-analysis - in particular the analysis of his dreams. In a later letter, Freud confirmed on the basis of his self-analysis that 'phantasies are products of later periods and are projected back from the then present on to the earliest childhood...'51 Freud conjectured that the key to understanding this process lay in the theory of dreams. He told Fleiss that in a few days he would be able to reveal that 'the dream-pattern is capable of the most general application' and that 'the key to hysteria as well really lies in dreams.'52 These two mental processes were similar in that both dreams and hysterical attacks could be seen as 'wish-fulfillments'.

A summary statement of Freud's views up to this point - that is prior to the full articulation of the topographical model of the mind and the theory of dreams - is contained in a letter to Fliess dated February 1999:

'Reality - wish-fulf illment. It is from this pair of opposites that our mental life springs.'53 Freud believed that it was the transference of phantasied wish- fulf illments onto current reality that accounted for both normal and pathological phenomena of mental life.

(51) Freud, S. Extracts from the Fliess Papers. (1950[1892-1899]). Letter 101, January 3 and 4 1899,276. (52) Freud, S. Extracts from the Fliess Papers. (1950(1892-99]). Letter 101, 276.

(53) Freud, S. (1950(1892-99]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. Letter 105, February 19 1899. S E 1 .278.

PART 1. HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT.