Valenstein reviews Freud's passion for insight, knowledge, and truth, and its foundation in the science of his times and in his relationship to Breuer. He discusses traumatic hysteria and hypnoid hysteria and their relationship to dissociated and other abnormal states of consciousness, such as defense or conflict hysteria. Finally, he describes the practice of therapy during the early years of psychoanalysis and its relationship to insight. He makes the point that "enhancement of integration, i.e., the restoration of ego function consequent to the gaining of insight into conflict," is the mechanism by which insight is curative.