Studien über Hysterie

Breuer and Freud present hysteria as a disorder of memory rather than of the nerves or the will. The book opens with a joint paper, reprinted from eighteen ninety-three, in which the two authors state the thesis that the hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences, a distressing experience whose accompanying emotion was never discharged persisting in the mind and converting itself into a bodily symptom. Five case studies follow, Breuer's account of the patient he calls Anna O., whose treatment gave the method its founding impetus and who herself named it the talking cure, and four by Freud, including his account of Emmy von N. The therapeutic claim is that symptoms disappear when the patient, under hypnosis or through being encouraged to speak freely, recovers the original scene and releases the strangulated affect attached to it. Freud describes the material as stratified almost geologically, the outer layers readily remembered while the deeper recollections grow harder to recognise as they surface. Breuer closes with a theoretical chapter developing the hypnoid state, the principle of constancy and the distinction between bound and mobile cathexis, and Freud with a more practice-oriented chapter on therapy, in which he lays greater stress than his co-author on the causative role of sexuality.

Written from the wikipedia article on the book.

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