A Practical Way to Feel Better. Gerardo Arenas

nor the determination of the symptom.

      For Freud, the unconscious is the way to fulfill the precepts of rationality. If this irrational symptom of Emma has a rational explanation, we must look for the wrong hidden premise (the proton pseudos) that allows us to deduce it. Then, he says that

      Further investigation brought to light a second memory, which she denies having had in mind at the moment of Scene I. Nor is there any evidence to support its presence there. On two occasions, when she was a child of eight, she had gone into a shop to buy some sweets and the shopkeeper had grabbed at her genitals through her clothes. In spite of the first experience she had gone to the shop a second time, after which she had stopped away. Afterwards she reproached herself for having gone the second time, as though she had wanted to provoke the assault. And in fact a “bad conscience” by which she was oppressed could be traced back to this experience.

      In this second scene―thinks Freud―we must find the equivalent of what is the falsity of a previous premise (proton pseudos) in order to reach an illogical conclusion. In other words, Scene II is what allows Emma’s senseless symptom to be logically deduced from Scene I. He says it this way: