In nearly every case, as Freud eventually found reason to believe,
a primary lesion of the sexual emotions dates from the period of puberty
and frequently of childhood, and in nearly every case the intimately
private nature of the lesion causes it to be carefully hidden from
everyone, and even to be unacknowledged by the subject of it. In the
earlier cases Breuer and Freud found that a slight degree of hypnosis is
necessary to bring the lesion into consciousness, and the accuracy of the
revelations thus obtained has been tested by independent witness. Freud
has, however, long abandoned the induction of any degree of hypnosis; he
simply tries to arrange that the patient shall feel absolutely free to
tell her own story, and so proceeds from the surface downwards, slowly
finding and piecing together such essential fragments of the history as
may be recovered, in the same way he remarks, as the archaeologist
excavates below the surface and recovers and puts together the fragments
of an antique statue. Much of the material found, however, has only a
symbolic value requiring interpretation and is sometimes pure fantasy.
Freud now attaches great importance to dreams as symbolically representing
much in the subject's mental history which is otherwise difficult to
reach.[275] The subtle and slender clues which Freud frequently follows in
interpreting dreams cannot fail sometimes to arouse doubt in his readers'
minds, but he certainly seems to have been often successful in thus
reaching latent facts in consciousness.
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