First published in 1893 and written in collaboration with Josef Breuer (1842-1925), a distinguished Austrian physician that made key discoveries in neurophysiology, Studies on Hysteria introduces the famous case study of Anna O., whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936), an Austrian-Jewish feminist and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women). The book features a joint introductory paper, followed by five individual studies of "hysterics", seminal for the development of psychoanalysis, and four more studies solely by Freud; finishing with a theoretical essay by Breuer and a more practice-oriented essay on therapy by Freud.
Freud regards symptomology in this book as stratified in an almost geological way, with the outermost strata being easily remembered and accepted, while "the deeper one goes the more difficult it is to recognise the recollections that are surfacing". Breuer's work with Bertha Pappenheim provided the founding impetus for psychoanalysis, as Freud himself would later acknowledge. In their preliminary paper, both physicians agree that "the hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences". Freud however would come to lay more stress on the causative role of sexuality in producing hysteria, as well as gradually repudiating Breuer's use of hypnosis as a means of treatment. Some of the theoretical scaffolding of the Studies on Hysteria – "strangulated affect", hypnoid state – would be abandoned with the crystallisation of psychoanalysis as an independent technique.
However, many of Freud's clinical observations – on mnenmic symbols or deferred action for example – would continue to be confirmed in his later work. At the same time, Breuer's theoretical essay, with its examination of the principle of constancy, and its differentiation of bound and mobile cathexis, would continue to inform Freud's thinking as late as the 1920's.
At the time of its first release, the book tended to polarise opinion, both within and outside by the medical community. Though many were critical, Havelock Ellis offered an appreciative account, while a leading Viennese paper would characterise the work as "the kind of psychology used by poets". Studies on Hysteria also received a positive review from psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, although Bleuler nevertheless suggested that the results Freud and Breuer reported could have been the result of suggestion.
(PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION.)
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