ABSTRACT
The Studies on Hysteria unfolds the theory and practice of the talking cure, which Sigmund Freud later transformed into psychoanalysis by abandoning hypnosis, and relying on the patient’s free associations. Although Freud fitfully recognized the weight of his relationships with men, neither his faithful disciples nor his bolder feminist critics have asked why psychoanalysis first came into print as a male collaboration—Studies on Hysteria, written by Freud and his mentor, physician Josef Breuer. Breuer’s and Freud’s collaboration on Studies on Hysteria completes the transformation of female hysteria into male bonding—a metamorphosis most vivid in “Anna O.,” the first case history in the text and the only one that Breuer wrote. Freud was indebted to Breuer for the single cell which, dividing and multiplying, produced the body of psychoanalysis. Anna O., whose case dominates Studies, occupies such a prominent position in psychoanalytic history not only because of her “talking cure,” but because of the bizarre scene which ended her treatment.
