#  Architecture of Hysteria, Draft M 

 



   ![Full size image of draft M of Freud's Architecture of Hysteria notes.](/sites/g/files/omnuum6316/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/chsi/files/architecture_of_hysteria_draft_m.jpg?itok=_Hl0U7D2) 

 

Hysteria, an ancient malady, drew Freud’s interest early on in his career and served as the site for many of his most important discoveries—among them the causative role of sexual trauma, the importance of fantasy, repression, resistance, and, as he wrote to his colleague and intimate friend Wilhelm Fliess, “the reproduction of scenes.” In this image, set in a Cartesian axis using two colors, black and red, and sent to Fliess on May 25, 1897, Freud schematically describes how hysterical symptoms are manifested and worked through in the analytic setting. The traumatic scenes at the root of hysteria (labelled I, II, etc.) are, he explains, “arranged in order of increasing resistance.” The work of analysis is to bring these repressed scences to consciousness in a process of repeatedly looping down to them, deeper down each time—a dynamic, iterative process succinctly captured in this image.



 

##  Keep scrolling to explore this image in more detail. 

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### Figure 1

Three triangles hover above four stepped lines (I, II, III, IV). These lines represent four stages in the uncovering of the traumatic scene, each more deeply repressed than the last. The three triangles represent the scene of analysis, in which only the patient’s symptoms are visible—not the underlying trauma they encode. On the left side of the drawing, Freud writes “scenes, depth of repression.” Dashed red lines, side-by-side the black ink lines, show the analytic work of looping down ever deeper to the site of trauma.

   ![Figure 1 of Freud's notes on the Architecture of Hysteria.](/sites/g/files/omnuum6316/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/chsi/files/hysteria_figure_1.png?itok=kWf9zteF) 

 

**Figure 1**---

### Figure 2

On the right side of the drawing, Freud has scrawled the word Arbeit (work).

   ![A subsection of Freud's notes, highlighting 'Arbeit', the German word for 'work'.](/sites/g/files/omnuum6316/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/chsi/files/hysteria_figure_2.png?itok=RI9Z21rX) 

 

**Figure 2**---

### Figure 3

At the bottom of the drawing, Freud has added an explanatory note: “Work consists of a number of such stages at deeper and deeper levels.”

   ![A subsection of Freud's notes, translated as 'Work consists of a number of such stages at deeper and deeper levels.'](/sites/g/files/omnuum6316/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/chsi/files/hysteria_figure_3.png?itok=IBQz1Qav) 

 

**Figure 3**---

### [**Return to exhibit.**](/current_exhibitions/freud-interp-drawings/freud-origins-psychoanalysis "The Origins of Psychoanalysis")