PREFACE

In 1893 we published our experiences concerning a new method
of investigation and treatment of hysterical phenomena,¹⁾ and added
to it in the briefest way possible the theoretical views at which we
arrived. This “preliminary communication” is herewith reprinted
as an illustrative and demonstrative thesis.

We are also adding here a series of case histories, the selection
of which was unfortunately not determined merely by scientific con-
siderations. Our experience was obtained in private practice from
an educated and well read social class, and its contents repeatedly
touch upon the most intimate life and destiny of our patients. It
would be a serious breach of confidence to publish such information,
and a danger lest the patients be recognized and the facts, which were
confided solely to the physician, spread in their circle. We have,
therefore, been constrained to dispense with some of the most instruc-
tive and most convincing observations. This naturally concerned in
the first place those cases in which sexual and marital relations were
of etiological significance. It is for this reason that we can adduce
only very incomplete evidence for our view that sexuality plays the
principal rôle in the pathogenesis of hysteria as a source of psychic
traumas, and as a motive of “defense” of the repression of ideas
from consciousness. We just had to refrain from publishing those
observations which savored strongly of sex.

The case histories are followed by a series of theoretical explana-
tions, and in the last chapter on therapy, the technique of the
“cathartic method” is discussed as it has developed in the hands of
the neurologist.

If different or even contradictory views are occasionally repre-
sented, let this not be considered as a vacillation of the conception.
It arises from the natural and justified differences of opinion of two
observers, who agree concerning the facts and principal views, but
whose interpretations and assumptions do not always coincide.

J. Breuer.
S. Freud.

April, 1895.

¹⁾Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phänomene. Neurol-Centralblatt, 1893, Nos. 1 and 2.