Studies on Hysteria

Symptoms are memories1

The 1893 joint paper: "the hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences", memories whose feeling was never discharged.

Talking relieves them2

Breuer saw Anna O.'s symptoms ease after she described them to him; he named this the cathartic method.

Layers of memory1

Freud pictures symptoms as layered: the outer memories come easily, and the deeper ones are harder to recognise as they surface.

The talking cure2

Anna O. herself coined "talking cure", and jokingly "chimney sweeping", for telling Breuer her symptoms.

Catharsis2

Breuer's main contribution: releasing pent-up feeling by recalling the event that caused it.

Ideas later dropped1

"Strangulated affect" and the "hypnoid state" were abandoned as psychoanalysis became its own technique.

Ideas that lasted1

Freud's observations on mnemic symbols and deferred action kept being confirmed in his later work.

Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim)2

Breuer's patient, with paralysed limbs, numbness and disturbed sight and speech, treated by letting her talk through each symptom.

Emmy von N.1

One of Freud's four cases, the first he evaluates in the book.

Was Anna O. cured?1

Borch-Jacobsen and Shamdasani say Freud always knew her treatment was not an unmitigated success; Richard Skues defends Breuer's account.

Suggestion1

Eugen Bleuler reviewed it well but suggested the results could have come from suggestion.

One cause or many2

Louis Breger notes Freud hunted for a single cause such as sexual conflict, while Breuer allowed many kinds of trauma.

The Interpretation of Dreams

Freud's next step: from remembered trauma to dreams and the unconscious wish.

Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

Freud's own overview of the whole theory, twenty years on.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy

What the talking cure became in today's practice.