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Anna O.: The woman behind Freud's first case study
The case of Anna O. showed that psychoanalysis worked. Did Freud tamper with it?
It was treated by an array of cures, from gynecological massage (prescribed orgasm), hypnotism, rest, and drugging, to change of scenery, and, yes, for a very few patients, starting in the late nineteenth century, Breuer and Freud’s cathartic method. The two doctors, one senior and one junior, open the book with a co-written introduction and end it with a pair of stand-alone essays (Freud’s undermining Breuer’s) in which the nascent theories of repression, defense, catharsis, and abreaction first appear. Early in the book, he disparages two Freudian terms: “secondary gain,” which can be described as the unconscious advantage patients acquire through their illness (stereotyped here as attention), and “ la belle indifférence,” a calm character in the face of crisis.
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