e methods, with exception of
the last, are essentially useful only if the starting experience is
still accessible to the memory of the patient. He may be unaware that it
had anything to do with his nervous symptoms but he recognizes the
experience still as soon as his attention is directed towards it. The
psychologically more interesting but probably more exceptional situation
is the one in which it is not only forgotten but cannot be recognized
when it is brought to consciousness. The shortest way to get hold of
such past impressions is the hypnotic one. The hypnotic state sharpens
the memory and experiences of early childhood or apparently
insignificant experiences of later life may be brought back when they
would have been inaccessible to any intentional effort of the attention.
Even still more surprising is the success if the association is left to
a dreamy play of ideas suggested perhaps by gazing into a crystal ball
or by a meaningless talking. Perhaps the patient lies with closed eyes
on the couch while the physician holds his hand. A few words are given
to him as a starting point and then he is thoughtlessly to pronounce
whatever comes to his mind, not only unfinished sentences but loose
phrases, single words, apparently without meaning and slowly ideas arise
which betray the original intrusion. At last memories and lost emotions
come again to the surface, and the watchful psychotherapist may discover
the complex, which is then to be removed by discharge or by
side-tracking. This is the so-called psychoanalytic method.

Finally the psychotherapist may go still one step further. After all it
often seems inexplainable that just this or that emotional experience
made such a deep and lasting impression while a thousand other
experiences passed by without leaving any mischievous after-effect. It
seems that indeed the conditions are still more complicated. That
emotional disturbance operated dangerously perhaps only because it
itself appealed to a suppressed desire and this seems to hold true
especially for suppressed emotions of the sexual sphere. The desire for
gratification in normal or abnormal channels was perhaps attached by the
mind to some group of objects. It was completely suppressed but it left
an abnormal tension in the central system. If now a chance experience
touches on this group of ideas, there results an explosive reaction; and
movements, convulsions, spasms, obsessions, and fears set in which get
th