ABSTRACT

From a political point of view, psychoanalytic therapy can be seen as having its origins partly in Freud's lack of prejudices against a method of treatment which was generally seen as alien to German medicine. When in 1887 Freud favourably reviewed the German translation of Weir Mitchell's book, the rest cure was a widely used approach to treat middle-class and upper middle-class hysterics. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that a strong patriarchal and authoritarian bias permeated Freud's theory in general and his perspective on the treatment of hysterical women in particular. When Freud was recommended to Anna von Lieben by his highly renowned colleague and mentor Josef Breuer in 1888, he was still a young, inexperienced and not all-too-well-reputed doctor at the beginning of his career. Freud presented psychoanalytic therapy as part of a capitalist commodity transaction, which enables patients to increase their income.