According to Freud, the symptoms of hysteria reflect repressed sexual memories, desires and fantasies either through conversion or somatisation or through anxiety hysteria. The main defence mechanism in each case is repression, particularly of the oedipal conflict; it is also evident that pre-oedipal, for example, oral, conflicts often play a rôle in hysteria. The author describes how a conversion symptom, in this case epileptic spasms, represents fantasies and traumatic experiences in the different phases of childhood in a middle-aged woman's analysis. The coexistence and alteration of early pre-oedipal and oedipal themes are elucidated, as is, with the help of transference analysis, the amelioration of a symptom when its current meanings become conscious in the patient's mind and the patient is able to verbalise them.