ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, a band of intelligent and inquiring professionals acquired a critical mass as they rediscovered the sort of patient that Josef Breuer had grappled to understand when he first encountered Bertha Pappenheim in 1880. Just over a century after Breuer ceased treating Bertha Pappenheim, a society dedicated to the study of dissociation was founded in 1984 and named the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation. In 2016, as President of this Society, which is now the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), I took the opportunity to share some reflections on a previous journey undertaken by the early analysts and what contemporary lessons we might take from it. This paper expands on the content of that 2016 Presidential Editorial.
