ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Freud’s understanding of hysteria and his treatment of his hysterical patients. The term ‘hysteria’ comes from the Greek word ‘hustéra’, meaning womb, so hysteria was seen as a female disorder. Plato’s recommended treatment for hysterics was marriage and pregnancy. Later, in medieval times, the hysteric or female deviant was believed to form an alliance with the devil for the purpose of witchcraft, so she became a dangerous force. Freud wrote, ‘No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast and seeks to wrestle with them can expect to come through the struggle unscathed’.
Misogyny played a major role in the depiction of women as hysterics and as prone to witchcraft. Early in the nineteenth century, extreme measures, such as clitorectomies and ovariectomies, were advocated in cases of intractable hysteria. Freud was in the avant-garde in his discovery of a psychological treatment for his hysterical female patients. He acted more humanely than most of his colleagues. But in Elisabeth von R.’s case, Freud used a ‘hunting-of-witches’ approach, an inquisitorial approach, using pressure to extract a confession. However, the case of Katharina shows Freud at his best, when he is least intrusive, attending and empathetically listening to the young girl’s story about being seduced by her father.
