g more concrete our abstract
discussion of methods, essentially from the class of neurasthenics,
psychasthenics, hysterics, and so on.

In all these reports, I shall confine the account to the few points
which are to illustrate the psychical factors, thus abstaining entirely
from the further details which any medical history of the cases would
demand and from all results of further examination and other
particulars. As a matter of course, I exclude the possibility of
identifying the patient. I may start with a typical case of obsessing
ideas of simplest character and with simple routine treatment
illustrating the emphasis on antagonistic ideas.

A man of mature age, well educated, well built and in every respect
in good health, without nervous history and without other nervous
symptoms, suffered vehemently by the persistent recurrence of a
visual image which entirely absorbed his attention. He knew
exactly the development of his trouble. A woman acquaintance of his
had committed suicide by poisoning herself. He knew her slightly
and the emotion of personal loss played hardly any role in the
case. But he had met her at a gay dinner a short time before her
death. The news of the suicide came to him when he was overtired
from work. The idea of the contrast between seeing his friend
partaking of the dinner and imagining her drinking the poison gave
him a strong shock. There was hardly any grief mixed in. He
remembers that he shivered at the thought of the contrast, and in
that moment the visual image of the woman raising a glass of poison
to her mouth flashed into his mind and thus became almost a part of
the shock. From that time on, the memory image of this scene
returned more and more frequently. At first it associated itself
with any chance mentioning of death or suicide and to a very slight
degree with the idea of a meal. More and more any element of a meal
and of social life, the word soup or meat, the word gown or dance,
brought up at once the picture of the woman, which had in the
meantime lost every element of personal relation. Any sad thought
of her ending had faded away. It remained merely a troublesome
impression. The man fought against it by trying to suppress the
idea but the more he fought against it, the more insistently it
rushed forward through new and ever new association pat