IN our "Preliminary Communication" we have stated that while investigating the etiology of hysterical symptoms we have also discovered a therapeutic method which we consider of practical significance. "We found, at first to our very greatest surprise, that the individual hysterical symptoms immediately disappeared without returning if we succeeded in thoroughly awakening the memories of the causal process with its accompanying effect, and if the patient circumstantially discussed the process giving free play to the affect" (p. 4).
We furthermore attempted to explain how our psychotherapeutic method acts. "It does away with the effects of the original not ab-reacted to ideas by affording an outlet to the suppressed affect through speech. It brings it into associative correction by drawing it into normal consciousness (in mild hypnosis), or it is done away with through the physician's suggestion just as happens in somnambulism with amnesia" (p. 13).
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