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This monograph of 159 pages deals with Freud's manuscripts as published posthumously. It appears simultaneously as XVIIth volume of the new edition of the “Gesammelte Werke” in chronological order in 18 volumes by the same editors.
Besides an introduction it contains contributions to the “Studies about Hysteria,” the Fulfillment of a “Prophetical” Dream, Psychoanalysis and Telepathy, the Head of the Medusa, the Splitting of the “Ego” in the Defense Mechanism, an abbreviated Psycho-Analysis, etc.
Ad Hysteria, Freud writes that according to Charcot a grand hysterical attack consists of four phases: (1) the epileptoid, (2) the large movements, (3) the phase of the “attitudes passionelles,” (4) the terminal delirium. Some of these phases may become independent, prolonged, modified or missing which results in a variety of hysterical attacks. Most physicians accept that the hysterical attack is a periodical discharge of the motor and psychical cortical centers.
Hysterics had been treated with hypnotic suggestion and by questioning during the hypnosis their psychic activities during the attack had been studied. For the explanation of the hysterical phenomenon the acceptance of a dissociation—splitting of the consciousness contents—is undispensable.
Freud evolves the following explanations of the hysterical attack: (1) The constant and essential content of a repeated hysterical attack is the return of psychical reminiscences. (2) The episode that returns in the reminiscence is not an incidental one but it is the one that had caused the hysterical attack; it is the psychical trauma. (3) The reminiscence that forms the contents of the hysterical attack belongs to the “Unconscious” which in every hysteria is more or less highly organized. During the attack the patient is completely or partially in the “Unconscious.” If the former be true the patient has amnesia for the entire attack in his average life. If the latter be true the patient realizes the change in his condition and his