ABSTRACT
It is time to place the mother-daughter story in its historical perspective. This chapter deals with the history and the various backgrounds of psychoanalytic theory as they relate to female development. Well over a hundred years ago, in 1895, Studien über Hysterie [Studies on Hysteria] by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud appeared, marking the beginning of a new century in psychiatry.1 This work was based entirely on experiences with female patients and should certainly be incorporated here, even though the mother-daughter relationship was in no way part of it yet.
