| | 1 | Author: | Prince, Morton, editor | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Journal of Abnormal Psychology  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE progress in our understanding of hysteria has come largely
through the elaboration of the so-called mechanisms by which the
symptoms arise. These mechanisms have been declared to reside or to
have their origin in the subconsciousness or coconsciousness. The
mechanisms range all the way from the conception of Janet that the
personality is disintegrated owing to lowering of the psychical tension
to that of Freud, who conceives all hysterical symptoms as a result of
dissociation arising through conflicts between repressed sexual desires
and experiences and the various censors organized by the social life.
Without in any way intending to set up any other general mechanism or to
enter into the controversy raging concerning the Freudian mechanism,
which at present is the storm center, the writer reports a case in which
the origin of the symptoms can be traced to a more simple and fairly
familiar mechanism, one which, in its essence, is merely an
intensification of a normal reaction of many women to marital
difficulties. In other words, women frequently resort to measures which
bring about an acute discomfort upon the part of their mate, through his
pity, compassion and self-accusation. They resort to tears as their
proverbial weapon for gaining their point. In this case the hysterical
symptoms seem to have been the substitute for tears in a domestic
battle. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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