Compulsion as Cure: Contrary Voices in Early Freud

In certain neuroses, and in hypnosis, voices seem to travel through people rather than emanate directly from them. Unusual speech situations of this sort pervade Sigmund Freud's early text called "A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism" (1892-93). ¹ Freud's brief paper is divided into two parts: one, the case history of a woman whose lack of self-control is cured by hypnotic suggestion and two, the description of a psychical mechanism that may cause neurotics to act against their manifest intentions. According to Freud, the mechanism, which he calls "counter-will" (Gegenwille), could explain a wide range of compulsive, involuntary behavior. The following analysis of Freud's essay identifies counter-will as a voice whose dynamic range is replicated in both the story and the discourse of the case in question. ²

My use of the term voice here concerns attribution and control. Voice may ordinarily tell us who is speaking. ³ Yet even in the early work under consideration, Freud describes a crisis of attribution, as the notion of a unified subject grows inadequate for explaining neurotic phenomena. The question comes to be, who is in control of the utterance? ⁴ Symptoms are saying something, insists Freud; so we must ask, who--or what--is really speaking? Strictly speaking, this question also raises problems of enunciation and mood. ⁵ Linguistically, the subject of an everyday utterance may differ from the authority to which it is attributed. And reported or narrated speech can distance a voice, varying the degree to which it is audible and identifiable. When using suggestions to treat problems of volition, Freud enters a fray of competing wills only to perpetuate a dynamic of uncontrolled utterance. So the treatment repeats the problem, and Freud's compelling voice of healing, which dominates his narrative, is undermined by a corresponding echo of compulsive resistance. In throwing his voice, so to speak, Freud throws his success into doubt.

Giving Voice to the Counter-will

Before turning to the case history proper (the tale of treatment), I shall address the counter-will (the problem). Freud's explanation of the counter-will is initially elaborate and tentative, but quickly gives way to a free-ranging account of many disturbances that may be attributed to the mechanism's power. These include echolalia, coprolalia, and the involuntary utterance of secrets. Such kinds of expression bring attention to the seemingly unprovoked yet repetitive dynamic of the counter-will; it spreads like a rumor without an identifiable source. Freud's observance of a consistently contrary relationship, an inverse correlation, between intentions and uncontrollable symptoms leads him to infer the existence of an alternative voice, the source of symptomatic echoes comprising the counter-will.

Nearly all of the examples adduced by Freud in the theoretical part of his paper involve the uncontrollable repetition of sounds or words. Moreover, the counter-will's source is introduced as a voice. Freud speculates that a person's intention may be accompanied by "counter-expectation" (Gegenerwartung), which may grow to form what Freud calls "distressing contra-ideas" (peinliche Kontrastvorstellungen). "In the case of intention," he writes, "these contra-ideas sound like this [lauten . . . so]: 'I shall not succeed in carrying out my intention [Vorsatz] because this or that is too difficult for me and I am unfit to do it . . . '" (SE 1.121). Freud thus conceives of a first person speaker, mimicking what psychologists today might call "negative self-talk." The reference to thought as sound provides a model of willpower as speech in the form of quoted monologue. A hypothetical construct within a nonnarrative part of Freud's nonfictional essay, the contra-idea is, on the one hand, an elusive, antagonistic translation of the intention. On the other hand, it is an entirely theoretical source of translated symptoms. ⁶

Freud's use of the first person singular pronoun suggests that everyone, no matter how healthy, knows what it is like to hear internal voices of doubt...