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has not previously been hypnotized, but it is safe
to suppose that she has read about hypnotism, though I cannot tell
what notions she may have about the hypnotic state.¹
       This treatment by warm baths,
massage twice a day and hypnotic suggestion was continued for the
next few days. She slept well, got visibly better, and passed most
of the day lying quietly in bed. She was not forbidden to see her
children, to read, or to deal with her correspondence.
     
       ¹ Every time she woke from hypnosis she
looked about her for a moment in a confused way, let her eyes fall
on me, seemed to have come to her senses, put on her glasses, which
she took off before going to sleep, and then became quite lively
and on the spot. Although in the course of the treatment (which
lasted for seven weeks in this first year and eight in the second)
we discussed every sort of subject, and although I put her to sleep
twice almost every day, she never made any comment to me about the
hypnosis or asked me a single question about it; and in her waking
state she seemed, so far as possible, to ignore the fact that she
was undergoing hypnotic treatment.
     
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    Studies On Hysteria
    49
     
     
       May 8, morning . - She
entertained me, in an apparently quite normal state, with gruesome
stories about animals. She had read in the Frankfurter
Zeitung , which lay on the table in front of her, a story of how
an apprentice had tied up a boy and put a white mouse into his
mouth. The boy had died of fright. Dr. K. had told her that he had
sent a whole case of white rats to Tiflis. As she told me this she
demonstrated every sign of horror. She clenched and unclenched her
hand several times. ‘Keep still! - Don’t say anything!
- Don’t touch me! - Supposing a creature like that was in the
bed!’ (She shuddered.) ‘Only think, when it’s
unpacked! There’s a dead rat in among them - one that’s
been gn-aw-aw-ed at!’
       During the hypnosis I tried to
disperse these animal hallucinations. While she was asleep I picked
up the Frankfurter Zeitung . I found the anecdote about the
boy being maltreated, but without any reference to mice or rats. So
she had introduced these from her delirium while she was reading.
(I told her in the evening of our conversation about the white
mice. She knew nothing of it, was very much astonished and laughed
heartily.¹)
     
       ¹ A sudden interpolation like this of a
delirium into a waking state was not uncommon with her and was
often repeated later in my presence. She used to complain that in
conversation she often gave the most absurd answers, so that people
did not understand her. On the occasion when I first visited her I
asked her how old she was and she answered quite seriously:
‘I am a woman dating from last century.’ Some weeks
later she explained to me she had been thinking at the time in her
delirium of a beautiful old cupboard which, as a connoisseur of old
furniture, she had bought in the course of her travels. It was to
this cupboard that her answer had referred when my question about
her age raised the topic of dates.
     
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    Studies On Hysteria
    50
     
       During the afternoon she had what
she called a ‘neck cramp’,¹ which, however, as she
said, ‘only lasted a short time - a couple of
hours’.
       Evening . - I requested
her, under hypnosis, to talk, which, after some effort, she
succeeded in doing. She spoke softly and reflected for a moment
each time before answering. Her expression altered according to the
subject of her remarks, and grew calm as soon as my suggestion had
put an end to the impression made upon her by what she was saying.
I asked her why it was that she was so easily frightened, and she
answered: ‘It has to do with memories of my earliest
youth.’ ‘When?’ ‘First when I was five
years old and my brothers and sisters often threw dead animals at
me. That was when I had my first fainting fit and spasms. But my
aunt said it was disgraceful and that I ought not