Freud found that by enabling people to recall and bring into conscious awareness previous events which often involved intolerable emotions that were not expressed at the time of the event, he was able to cure many hysterical symptoms which his patients suffered from that had no physiological basis, such as paralysis, blindness and loss of memory.
Freud supported this view with one very famous case – the case of Anna O. Anna suffered from paralysis in the right arm for which there was no apparent cause. In therapy Anna revealed that one evening she had been nursing her very ill father and she had begun dozing in a chair by his bed with her arm flung across the back of the chair.
In the half light she imagined that she saw a large black snake
Freud supported this view with one very famous case – the case of Anna O. Anna suffered from paralysis in the right arm for which there was no apparent cause. In therapy Anna revealed that one evening she had been nursing her very ill father and she had begun dozing in a chair by his bed with her arm flung across the back of the chair.
In the half light she imagined that she saw a large black snake