[273] The superiority of character
of the hysterical is indicated by the fact that the conflict between their
ideas of right and the bent of their inclinations is often an element in
the constitution of the hysterical state. Breuer and Freud are prepared to
assert that the hysterical are among "the flower of humanity," and they
refer to those qualities of combined imaginative genius and practical
energy which characterized St. Theresa, "the patron saint of the
hysterical."
To understand the position of Breuer and Freud we may start from the
phenomenon of "nervous shock" produced by physical traumatism, often of a
very slight character. Charcot had shown that such "nervous shock," with
the chain of resulting symptoms, is nothing more or less than hysteria.
Breuer and Freud may be linked on to Charcot at this point. They began by
regarding the most typical hysteria as really a _psychic traumatism_; that
is to say, that it starts in a lesion, or rather in repeated lesions, of
the emotional organism. It is true that the school of Charcot admitted the
influence of moral shock, especially of the emotion of fear, but that
merely as an "_agent provocateur_," and with a curious perversity Gilles
de la Tourette, certainly reflecting the attitude of Charcot, in his
elaborate treatise on hysteria fails to refer to the sphere of the sexual
emotions even when enumerating the "_agents provocateurs_.
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