The psychoanalysis of a woman suffering from conversion hysteria is presented to show that what might be considered physical or sexual abuse need not be psychologically damaging. This patient's early pleasure in masturbation was not psychologically damaging to her until her mother discovered her masturbating and choked her for it. Similarly, her pleasure bathing with her father and playing with his erect penis was not psychologically damaging to her until she learned from her church that sex was a sin. Thus, her early genital experiences were not psychologically traumatic until they conflicted with internalized external prohibitions. This was discovered late in her analysis after she relived in the transference, and then put into words, a painful, long-repressed, early external experience that had come into conflict with her pleasurable sexual drive. This conflict had been a psychologically traumatic experience that had led to her conversion symptoms.