ABSTRACT
If Freud were alive today, nearly 100 years after he and Breuer finished the “Preliminary Communication,” which eventually became the opening chapter of “Studies on Hysteria” (Breuer and Freud, 1893–1895), he would surely be amazed at the transformation of the central European world in which he had lived. He would be particularly surprised and delighted that the most fundamental goal of political liberalism, parliamentary democracy, had eventually triumphed against its enemies on both the left and right, for in 1892 the forces of Austrian liberalism seemed on the brink of utter defeat, and during the remaining years of Freud's long life that local defeat reechoed across Europe as the forces of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism went from victory to victory. Particularly in his early years, Freud cared a great deal about such political issues, and they had a direct bearing on his approach to the study of hysteria.
