8. Hysteria and hypnosis

Episode eight hysteria and hypnosis.

[00:00:10] In his book, hidden minds, thehistory of the unconscious, the British author and psychologist, Frank Telusdiscusses another, a comparatively neglected figure in the history of thoughtabout the unconscious mind. This was pier Genae a philosopher and psychologistwho worked in France and the latter part of the 19th century and early 20thamong his interests with use of hypnosis, to treat patients who wereexperiencing disorders that had no obvious physical explanation.

[00:00:35] In the latter part of the 19thcentury, the word hysteria was a catch all term, referring to symptoms andpatients that might nowadays fall under the categories of obsessive compulsivedisorders, epileptic seizures, histrionic personality disorders, dissociativeidentity disorders, or personality disorders.

[00:00:53] One such example of a so-calledhysterical patient as recounted by Telus was the case of a young woman by thename of Marie, tell us rights. At the age of only 19, Maria was considered bothinsane and incurable Marie suffered from convulsive hysterical tax withdelirium, which lasted for days. It eventually became clear that her symptomswere associated with the onset of menstruation.

[00:01:15] Various parts of her body wouldgo numb for no reason. And she would experience episodes of terror. She alsoclaimed to be completely blind in one eye. Although medical investigationrevealed that her eye was in perfect condition. Also just before the onset ofmenstruation Murray's character would change.

[00:01:31] She became gloomy, violent andexhibited nervous spasms. However, the most curious symptom she developed wasshivering is of the temperature in the room had suddenly dropped. In additionabout a day after menstruation began, Marie would experience a sharp painrising slowly from her abdomen and moving up to her throat.

[00:01:49] Upon the pain's reaching herthroat. Maria would begin to convulse before experiencing a long and severedelirium during which she would be unable to communicate or be cognizant of hersurroundings. As Telus recounts, traditional medical interventions did nothingto help. Marie as young physician peers Jenae became aware of her case andbegan to suspect that her symptoms might be associated with a traumatic memorythat was inaccessible to consciousness to find out Janae hypnotized, Marie, andafter various questions.

[00:02:17] Andrea hypnosis. Marie revealedthat her first menstrual period at age 13 was a horrifying experience, partlybecause no one had hold her to expect it or had explained to her what it was.She tried to stop the bleeding by plunging yourself into an ice bath. Thisbrought about violent shivering and her menstruation soon stopped after thatMurray became ill.

[00:02:36] And although she didn't timerecover most of her physical health where he did not menstruate again for fiveyears when she finally had a period again, after that interval, her shame anddistress return together with the symptoms already mentioned. Shanae had thenovel idea that if he could hypnotize Marie and in some sense, rebuild thetraumatic memory into something less upsetting her symptoms might disappear orat least diminish, he wrote it was necessary to bring her back through suggestionto the age of 13, put her back in the original circumstances of this delirium,convince her that her menstruation had lasted for three days and was notinterrupted through any regrettable incident.

[00:03:11] Now, once this was done, thefollowing menstruation came at dewpoint without any pain, convulsion ordelirium. If this account is accurate, then it would seem that Janae hadfigured out how to get a patient to access their unconscious mind while underhypnosis. What's more, it is as if Janae had through the process of hypnosis,reached into Marie's mind and removed a traumatic memory, like a malignanttumor, and then replaced it with another memory that was benign.

[00:03:36] Not only that, but thereplacement seems to have cured Maria, some of her so-called hystericalsymptoms.

[00:03:45] If Jenny's method could bereplicated, the possibility would open up if helping a great many otherpatients as well. The therapeutic potential here could be revolutionaryfurther. Janae not only proposed a method for treating hysteria, but alsosuggested the concept of disassociation, which is still a tool in thepsychiatric toolkit today.

[00:04:04] The idea was that the hidden andtraumatic memories come in a cluster, a traumatic experience, often results,not in a single flashbulb memory that recalls just one moment or scene. Rathera traumatic experiences often recall there's a series of events and emotionalresponses to those events that we sometimes find ourselves reliving.

[00:04:20] Should they have office size?It's such clusters making up our memories of trauma, produce a kind ofpsychological Island in the self, almost an independent personality dwellinginside of us. Shanae's innovations, both practical and conceptual took place in1885 and 1895. Others were thinking along similar lines to those or GNA in1892, a paper entitled on the psychical mechanisms of hysterical phenomena.

[00:04:44] Preliminary communication waspublished by two Austrians, Joseph Brier and Sigmund Freud. The latter of whomwas at that time, relatively unknown. This preliminary communication is widelyregarded as the first description of a psychological treatment of hysteria. Itdoes acknowledge Shanae as a precursor, but only in a superficial way likeShanae, Briar and froze, discussed hypnosis as a way of treating hystericalpatients, but rather than replacing traumatic memories with benign ones, asJanae had done Briar and Freud suggest a method of bringing those originaltraumatic memories up to consciousness and reliving them.

[00:05:18] The suggestion that we find inthe preliminary communication is that normally when an event of emotionalsignificant effects us, we react appropriately in such way as to process it.When your company doesn't get the contract you had did for it's perfectlynatural to yell out, punch some upholstery or other, some choice words aboutthe people who passed over your firm for another one, though, you might want tokeep such remarks off of social media.

[00:05:40] Likewise, when something scaryhappens to you, even if no harm actually occurs, it's often quite appropriateto shut her or shriek with fear. And when you encounter something disgusting,it can often help to react with a gross or something like it. These responsesare ways of processing the emotionally significant event.

[00:05:56] And if there are allowed to runthe course, we usually get ourselves back to a baseline and equilibrium afternot too long. Brian Freud used the term AB reaction to describe the process ofresponding appropriately to emotionally rich events. But in some cases we can'tadd react to the emotional event.

[00:06:13] One reason is due to socialcircumstances, a person might be prevented from grieving the loss of somethingor someone they cherish possibly because that thing, or a person needs to bekept secret, or perhaps the person has a child and doesn't know how to respondappropriately to the emotional event.

[00:06:28] And a third type of case, theemotional event is so extreme that the person who experiences it, even ifthey're an adult has no idea how to respond. But in any of these cases, theemotionally significant event, often doesn't simply fade away over time.Instead it stays inside of us festering. And in fact, looking for a way out ofour system, Shanae Freud, and Broyer agree that such situations can causehysterical symptoms.

[00:06:50] But while Jenae suggestedreplacing the traumatic memory with a benign one broiler and fried advocate, ABreacting that memory, acting it out and more precisely acting out the responseof the subject would have had if they hadn't been prevented from. Circumstancesthat may have been out of their control, this preliminary communicationarticle, Brett Grier and Freud, a lot of attention.

[00:07:10] However, even though the older Broyerwas a mentor to the younger Freud who benefited immensely from the eldersguidance, it was not long before the two had a party of the ways as we'll seein the next episodes had to do with sex.