ABSTRACT
One hundred years ago, in November 1882, Joseph Breuer gave to his young colleague, Sigmund Freud, a detailed account of his successful treatment of a case of hysteria.The treatment had lasted two years and had been completed in June of that year.The patient is known to us as Anna O. and in most histories of psychoanalysis, she is accorded the honor of being the first proto-psychoanalytic patient – the inventor of ‘chimney sweeping’ as she called it (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895: 30), or free association, as we call it. It was Breuer’s genius to have recognized his patient’s special gift, and,no doubt influenced by his own powerful countertransferences, he was able to use his observations and his emotional responses to adopt a technique unusual for physicians in that authoritarian age; that is, he decided to listen to what his patient had to tell him.Freud was deeply impressed by the case report, and it clearly informed his own early work with hysterics and his developing psychological interests. Exactly ninety years ago on this date, December 18, 1892, Freud wrote the following to Wilhelm Fliess: ‘I am delighted to be able to tell you that our theory of hysteria (reminiscence, abreaction, etc.) is going to appear in the Neurologisches Centralblatt on January 1,1893, in the form of a detailed preliminary communication’ (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895: xiv). Freud was, of course, referring to the forthcoming publication of Studies on Hysteria. If anyone is interested in trying to date the birth of psychoanalysis, one might consider that conception occurred when Breuer planted the seed in Freud’s mind one hundred years ago and that psychoanalysis was born after a ten-year gestation, an appropriately long pregnancy for such a
complex child.We have a choice today whether to celebrate the centennial of the conception or the ninetieth birthday.
