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Most, if not all, physicians have had an opportunity to observe the disappearance of psychoneurotic symptoms without any definite procedure being undertaken to bring about the desired results. It is true also that many methods are still in vogue, some in essence in opposition one to the other, in the treatment of the neuroses. Without at this point going into the merits of the psychoanalytic method, the object of this presentation is to indicate the nature of the mechanisms concerned in the cases of so-called spontaneous cures, and to compare these mechanisms with those concerned in the cure which takes place in such patients who are treated by psychoanalysis. It has been my good fortune to analyze some patients in whom a spontaneous “cure” had taken place, with a recurrence of the symptoms for which they came for treatment. In the course of the analysis the spontaneous disappearance of the symptoms itself came under analytic investigation; this investigation disclosed, in the patients treated, at least some of the mechanisms concerned in the disappearance of the symptoms, and allowed at the same time a comparison of these mechanisms with those concerned in the cure by psychoanalytic therapy.
To illustrate what I have to offer I shall give the essential material concerned in the spontaneous recovery of three patients who came for treatment following a relapse into a neurosis.
In a stutterer, who suffered from his neurosis since the age of nine, a complete disappearance of his difficulties ensued upon his entering the service during the late war. Especially was the improvement noted while he was doing duty overseas. Here all symptoms vanished, including feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. He lost all his speech difficulties, and noted in addition a decidedly favorable