Sigmund Freud was a doctor of great intelligence, fascinated by the riddles of the human mind, was the creator of psychoanalysis and completely changed what we knew until then, in his vast work, a patient would stand out and move on to history: the case of Anna O.
Freud was especially curious about the cases that medicine at the time called “inexplicable. “There were several of these patients in the famous hospital in Salpetriére. Blind or paralyzed people with no identified physical origin and similar cases.
- At the time.
- Many of these cases were being treated with hypnosis.
- And Freud did the same.
- He learned the techniques needed to carry it out and practice it in his office.
- However.
- He noticed that his patients recovered.
- But then they relaught the same symptoms or developed others as replacements.
- For him and Josef Breuer.
- His teacher.
- Everything seemed like a crossroads until his paths crossed with Anna O’s case.
Josef Breuer was a hysteria specialist. He was also the most important figure in clinical hypnosis at the time. Freud became his apprentice and admired him deeply. Together they wrote the first lines of what would be the history of psychoanalysis. Anna O’s case was instrumental in both advancing the understanding of the human mind.
At the time, hysteria was considered a disease of women, they claimed to have physical problems just to get attention, Breuer was convinced that they did not lie and Freud thought the same thing, that is, none thought they were simulations.
Anna O. was a 21-year-old Austrian girl from a wealthy family. She was a particularly intelligent and educated child. However, he began to show outlandish and different symptoms. She went into some kind of “trance”? what she called “clouds”. I was suffering hallucinations where I saw snakes and skulls. I was silent. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t drink liquids. Sometimes he forgets his mother tongue, German, and only speaks English or French.
Breuer began treating her when she had a persistent and exhausting cough, also had paralysis of the face, arm and leg, her father had a TB abscess and she was the one who cared for him during the illness, however, she began to get sick herself.
Josef Breuer hypnotized her, but realized that she was only receiving very chaotic reports. The second time he hypnotized her, he asked if anything bothered her. Anna replied with this phrase: ‘Ajam’is acht person bella mi’please lieboehn night It was crazy and unusual. A five-language phrase Breuer intuitively decided that he would treat Anna O without hypnosis.
Since then, Breuer has focused on processing using listening as the main tool, encouraging Anna O. to talk and say everything you could think of, the symptoms improved and the basis of what would be free association or free association method appeared.
He began calling these sessions “chimney sweep” or “word cure. “In the latter sense, psychoanalysis has been identified in history. Breuer, in turn, called this procedure the “cathartic method”.
The therapeutic process with Anna O. has had many ups and downs; eventually, he fell in love with Breuer and developed a strong dependence on her; he too was attracted to her. Being married, he decided to terminate the treatment. Some time later, Freud discovered in these facts the phenomenon of “transference” and the sexual desire that was in the background of hysteria.
Anna O. has had two hospitalizations and several relapses. Still, there was a time when she managed to control all the symptoms that haunted her, she became an advocate for the rights of women and children, she was also a writer and translator of some importance. His life took a course that could be described as “normal. “
Eleven years later, Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud published one of the works in which psychoanalysis already appeared as a different approach: the book “Studies on Hysteria”. Anna’s case O. es, finally, the most illustrative of this work. Many came to say, symbolically, of course, that Anna O’s hysteria invented psychoanalysis.