Hysteria and its Historiography: A Review of Past and Present Writings (I)

Smith-Rosenberg Carroll , “The hysterical woman: Sex roles and role conflict in nineteenth-century America”, in Disorderly conduct: Visions of gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985), 197–216, p. 197.

Ellenberger Henri F. , “La psychiatrie et son histoire inconnue”, L'union médicale du Canada, xc, no. 3 (March, 1961), 281–9, p. 283.

The point de départ of this debate was Thomas Szasz's well-known work The myth of mental illness: Foundations of a theory of personal conduct (London, 1962), especially Parts II and III. Szasz took hysteria as a specimen illness in a wide-ranging critique of modern psychiatric practice.

Micale Mark S. , “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective”, History of psychiatry, i, no. 1 (March, 1990).

See, for instance, de Mandeville Bernard , A treatise of the hypochondriacal and hysterick passions (London, 1711), 78–111; Georget Etienne , De la physiologie du système nerveux, ii (Paris, 1821), 238–61; and Laycock Thomas , A treatise on the nervous diseases of women (London, 1840), 1–8.

Abricossoff Glafira , L'hystérie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (étude historique et bibliographique) (Paris, 1897); Amselle Gaston , Conception de l'hystérie: Étude historique et clinique (Paris, 1907); and Cesbron Henri , Histoire critique de l'hystérie (Paris, 1909).

Veith Ilza , Hysteria: The history of a disease (Chicago, 1965), with a French translation by Seghers in 1973.

Temkin Owsei , The falling sickness: A history of epilepsy from the Greeks to the beginnings of modern neurology (Baltimore, 1945). For a recent work in this mould, see Jackson Stanley , Melancholia and depression: From Hippocratic times to modern times (New Haven, 1986).

For a recent appreciation, see Merskey Harold , “Hysteria: The history of a disease: Ilza Veith”, British journal of psychiatry, cxlvii (1985), 576–9.

Trillat Étienne , Histoire de l'hystérie (Paris, 1986). Trillat's volume forms part of the “Médecine et Histoire” series of Seghers that includes thus far histories of syphilis, alcholism, and suicide.

Ibid., 55–60, 98–100.

Ibid., 100–11.

Ibid., 196–212, 243–52, 263–70, 252–60.

For a third general history, consult Wesley George Randolph , A history of hysteria (Washington, D.C., 1979). Although slighter in length and scholarship than the studies of Veith and Trillat, Wesley's book includes extensive excerpts from the original sources.

King Helen , From parthenos to gynē: The dynamics of category (doctoral dissertation, University College London, 1985), especially pp. 103–18; idem, “‘Accuse not nature’: The diagnosis of hysteria in the Hippocratic corpus”, paper delivered at the Triennial Meeting of the Combined Classical Associations, Oxford, July, 1988; idem, “Once upon a text: The Hippocratic origins of hysteria”, in Rousseau G. S. Porter Roy (eds), Hysteria in Western civilization (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, forthcoming).

King , From parthenos to gynē, 103.

Ibid., 107.

Ibid., 103.

Ibid., 108. In the large secondary literature on hysteria under review in this essay, I have found only a single other acknowledgement of the very late linguistic appearance of ‘hysteria’. See Brain W. Russell , “The concept of hysteria in the time of William Harvey”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, lvi (1963), 317–24, p. 323. Brain cites a somewhat different set of dates than King.

Veith , Hysteria: History of a disease (ref. 7), 10.

Merskey Harold Potter Paul lodge a similar complaint against Veith's handling of the Egyptian literature on hysteria in “The womb lay still in ancient Egypt”, British journal of psychiatry, clix (1989), 751–3.

King , “‘Accuse not nature’: The diagnosis of hysteria in the Hippocratic corpus” (ref. 15), 10 and 11. Exactly what this contemporary image of hysteria was, however, King does not explain. Littré, too, had his linguistic and cultural context, and on this score historians of the modern period may enlarge upon King's argument. Littré's volumes on Hippocratic gynaecology appeared toward the end of a long and vehement controversy within French mental medicine over the exact anatomical origins of hysteria. This debate began with Louyer-Villermay's Traité des maladies nerveuses ou vapeurs of 1816, continued over the following three decades with monographs by Georget, Brachet, Audibert, Dubois d'Amiens, Baumgartner, Landouzy, and Sandras, and culminated in Briquet's Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie of 1859. The authors of these works aggressively advanced either genital or neurological models of hysteria and routinely drew on historical antecedents — Foremost among them, the ancients for the gynaecological position and Willis and Sydenham for the neurological — To buttress their positions. During this period, the question of the anatomical seat of hysteria was debated on numerous occasions in the Paris Academy of Medicine. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, when Littré embarked upon his project, the revived uterine theory prevailed, and in the history of hysteria this may justly be described as a period of neo-Hippocratism. Furthermore, Littré later in his career enthusiastically advocated the practice of “retrospective medicine”, by which he meant the verification of contemporary diagnostic categories with medico-historical materials. In producing an ‘authoritative’ translation of Hippocrates, then, were Littré's interests purely scholarly? Or, in reading ‘hysteria’ into these texts, was he attempting to provide powerful historical ammunition for an ongoing and acrimonious medical debate?.

King , From parthenos to gynē (ref. 15), 114 and 106.

Ibid., 118.

Aphorismes (1851) in Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate , translated from the Greek by Émile Littré (Paris, 1839–61), iv, 545, no. 35; De la nature de la femme (1851), Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, vii, 312–431, paragraphs 3, 48, 49, 62, 68, 73, 75, 87; Des maladies des femmes (1853), Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, viii, Book I, paragraph 7, and Book II, paragraphs 123–7, 151, 152, 201; Robb Dr , “Hippocrates on hysteria”, Johns Hopkins Hospital bulletin, iii (1892), 78–79; and Palis James Rossopoulos Evangelos Triarhou Lazaros , “The Hippocratic concept of hysteria: A translation of the original texts”, Integrative psychiatry, iii, no. 3 (September, 1985), 226–8.

Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 14 and 20.

Des maladies de la femme in Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (ref. 25), viii, Book I, paragraph 7 and Book II, paragraph 151.

Diseases of women, translated and edited from the Greek with commentary by Hanson Ann Ellis (Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, work in progress).

Fredriksen Paula , “Hysteria and the Gnostic myths of creation”, Vigiliae Christianae, xxxiii (1979), 287–90.

Jacquart Danielle Thomasset Claude , Sexualité et savoir médical au moyen âge (Paris, 1985), 236–42.

See, for instance, the index citations under ‘hysteria’ in Mandrou Robert , Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVIIe siècle: Une analyse de psychologie historique (Paris, 1980); Anglo Sydney (ed.), The damned art: Essays in the literature of witchcraft (London, 1977); and Ewen C. L'Estrange , Witchcraft and demonianism (London, 1933).

The historical and psychological relationship between hysteria and these early religious states is a complicated subject. It has been explored in Whitlock F. A. Hynes J. V. , “Religious stigmatization: An historical and psychophysiological enquiry”, Psychological medicine, viii, no. 2 (May, 1978), 185–202; Spanos Nicholas P. Gottlieb Jack , “Demonic possession, Mesmerism, and hysteria: A social psychological perspective on their historical interrelations”, Journal of abnormal psychology, lxxxviii, no. 5 (October, 1979), 527–46; and Glaser G. H. , “Epilepsy, hysteria and ‘possession’: A historical essay”, Journal of nervous and mental disease, clxvi, no. 4 (April, 1978), 268–74.

Zilboorg Gregory in collaboration with Henry George W. , A history of medical psychology (New York, 1941), 226.

Witches, devils, and doctors in the Renaissance: Johannes Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum, 1583, translated by Shea John , edited, introduced, and annotated by George Mora in association with Erik Midelfort, Benjamin Kohl and Helen Bacon (University Center at Binghamton, Binghamton, New York, forthcoming). This is a translation from the sixth and final Latin edition of the work.

For overviews of the subject, see Rousseau G. S. , “The discourses of hysteria, 1600–1850: Enlightenment theory and practice”, in Rousseau Porter (eds), Hysteria in Western civilization (ref. 15); Porter Roy , Mind-Forg'd manacles: A history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (London, 1987); and Jackson Stanley , Melancholia and depression (ref. 8), chapters 6, 7, and 11.

Jorden Edward , A briefe discourse of a disease called the suffocation of the mother (London, 1603); Jorden Edward , A briefe discourse of a disease called the suffocation of the mother , edited with an introduction by MacDonald Michael , in Bynum W. F. Porter Roy (eds), Tavistock classics in the history of psychiatry (Routledge, London, forthcoming).

Ibid., chapter 1, 1a–5a.

Ibid., chapter 1, 5b–8b.

Ibid., chapter 4, 11b–17a.

Ibid., chapter 4, 14b.

Veith , Hysteria: History of a disease (ref. 7), 123.

Annemarie Leibbrand Werner , “Die ‘kopernikanische Wendung’ des Hysteriebegriffes bei Paracelsus”, in Domandl Sepp (ed.), Paracelsus: Werk und Wirkung , in Salzburger Beiträge zur Paracelsusforschung, xiii (Vienna, 1975), 125–32.

Veith Ilza , “On hysterical and hypochondriacal afflictions”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxx, no. 3 (May-June, 1956), 233–40; Boss Jeffrey M. N. , “The seventeenth-century transformation of the hysteric affection and Sydenham's Baconian medicine”, Psychological medicine, ix (1979), 221–34; Wright John P. , “Hysteria and mechanical man”, Journal of the history of ideas, xli, no. 1 (January-March, 1980), 233–47; Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 66–71; Trillat Étienne , “Chorée de Sydenham, danse de Saint-Guy et chorée rythmée hystérique: Essai de révision historique et critique”, L'Évolution psychiatrique, lui (1988), 49–72.

Chronic psychogenic pain as an associated hysterical phenomenon has been the subject of sharp medical interest in recent decades. A useful survey with a strong historical perspective can be found in Merskey Harold Spear Frank G. , Pain: Psychological and psychiatric aspects (London, 1967).

Micale , “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective” (ref. 4).

Carter Robert Brudenell , On the pathology and treatment of hysteria (London, 1853).

Veith , Hysteria: History of a disease (ref. 7), 199–209; Hunter Richard Macalpine Ida , Three hundred years of psychiatry, 1535–1860 (Hartsdale, New York, 1963), 1001–3.

Carter Robert Brudenell , On the pathology and treatment of hysteria , edited with an introduction by Bynum W. F. , in Bynum W. F. Porter Roy (eds), Tavistock classics in the history of psychiatry (Routledge, London, forthcoming).

Ibid., 33.

Ibid. , 34. Compare Freud's analysis in “‘Civilized’ sexual morality and modern nervous illness” (1908), in The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson (London, 1959), ix, 177–204.

Kane Alison Carlson Eric T. , “A different drummer: Robert B. Carter and nineteenth-century hysteria”, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, lviii, no. 6 (September, 1982), 519–34.

Carter Robert Brudenell , On the influence of education and training in preventing diseases of the nervous system (London, 1855).

Bart Pauline B. Scully Diana H. , “The politics of hysteria: The case of the wandering womb”, in Gomberg Edith S. Franks Violet (eds), Gender and disordered behavior: Sex differences in psychopathology (New York, 1979), 359–60; and Showalter Elaine , The female malady: Women, madness, and English culture, 1830–1980 (New York, 1985), 132 and 154.

Carter , On the pathology and treatment of hysteria (ref. 46), 50–59.

Bart Scully comment that “Carter's discussion of the distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary hysteria makes manifest his primary, secondary, and tertiary misogyny” (Bart and Scully, “The politics of hysteria” (ref. 53), 359).

Carter , for instance, warns against the dangers of iatrogenic symptoms induced during the initial medical interview, and he observes that many hysterical ailments are patterned on physical illnesses previously either experienced by the patient or witnessed in people around her.

Carter , On the pathology and treatment of hysteria (ref. 46), 146.

This clinical contest between doctor and patient is described on pages 110–30. Carter later compares breaking the will of the hysterical subject to exorcizing a demon (p. 132).

Carter , On the pathology and treatment of hysteria (ref. 46), 142.

Ibid., 130–51.

Ibid., 152–61.

Briquet Pierre , Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie (Paris, 1859). In both reference works and secondary sources (including Veith and Trillat), Briquet's name is widely mis-cited as Paul Briquet. This is perhaps due to the fact that his name appears on the title page of his book simply as “P. Briquet”. For the record: There existed two Briquet's of note during the second half of the nineteenth century. Paul Briquet was the author of a well-known work on French educational policy in 1879. Pierre Briquet, a physician, wrote from the 1840s to the early 1880s on a variety of medical topics, including syphilis, cholera, and quinine. He is also the author of the Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie.

After formulating the clinical criteria for the syndrome in a number of articles during the 1960s, Guze formally proposed the term in 1970 in Guze Samuel B. , “The role of follow-up studies: Their contribution to diagnostic classification as applied to hysteria”, Seminar psychiatry, ii (1970), 392–402. Elaborations of the concept appeared in a series of papers in the American journal of psychiatry from 1972 to 1975. Guze and his colleagues define Briquet's Syndrome, roughly coterminous today with Somatization Disorder, as “a stable, polysymptomatic disorder with wide-ranging and recurrent somatic complaints but with no known organic explanation and affecting primarily women under the age of thirty”.

See the critical remarks of Léon Chertok in “Hysteria versus Briquet's Syndrome”, American journal of psychiatry, cxxxii (1975), 1087 and Dongier Maurice , “Briquet and Briquet's Syndrome viewed from France”, Canadian journal of psychiatry, xxviii, no. 6 (October 1983), 422–7.

Mai François M. Merskey Harold , “Briquet's Treatise on hysteria: A synopsis and commentary”, Archives of general psychiatry, xxxvii (1980), 1401–5. Merskey is also the author of an excellent general study, The analysis of hysteria (London, 1979).

Mai François M. Merskey Harold , “Briquet's concept of hysteria: An historical perspective”, Canadian journal of psychiatry, xxvi, no. 1 (February, 1981), 57–63.

Mai François M. , “Pierre Briquet: Nineteenth-century savant with twentieth-century ideas”, Canadian journal of psychiatry, xxviii, no. 6 (October, 1983), 418–21. In this article, Mai brings to light three additional essays on hysteria written by Briquet in the early 1880s during the closing years of his life.

Recent research on hysterical symptomatology and functional hemispheric asymmetry has by and large borne out Briquet's findings. See Galin D. Diamond R. Braff D. , “Lateralization of conversion symptoms: More frequent on the left”, American journal of psychiatry, cxxxiv (1977), 578–80, and Flor-Henry P. , “A neurophysiological study of the stable syndrome of hysteria”, Biological psychiatry, xvi (1981), 601–17.

See also the discussions of Briquet in Trillat, Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 111–15 and Bercherie Paul , Genèse des concepts freudiens: Les fondements de la clinique, ii (Paris, 1983), 38–41.

Two examples are John Purcell's A treatise of vapours, or, hysterick fits (1702) and Ernst Kretschmer's Hysterie, Reflex und Instinkt (1923).

The best study remains Abricossoff, L'hystérie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (ref. 6).

Merskey , “Hysteria: History of a disease: Ilza Veith” (ref. 9), 577. Trillat suggests that the return to gynaecological theories was due to the effect of a new Romantic image of Woman — Mysterious, idealized, sexualized — And to the impact of the discovery of the process of ovulation which re-emphasized the generative capacity of the female body ( Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 98–99).

Bercherie Paul looks at the early French history of the topic in “Le concept de la folie hystérique avant Charcot”, Revue internationale d'histoire de la psychiatrie, i (1983), 47–58.

For a clear example of theory as handmaiden to therapeutics, see Pomme Pierre , Traité des affections vaporeuses des deux sexes (1763). Pomme's book was the most popular work on vapours in the second half of the 1700s.

Although, as a number of scholars have indicated, Freud, after an intensive early cultivation of hysteria, more or less abandoned the subject at the turn of the century for work on other topics. (“Toute la théorie psychanalytique est née de l'hystérie”, comments Trillat. “Seulement, la mère meurt après l'accouchement.”) On the theoretical de-centring of hysteria in the psychoanalytic literature of the twentieth century, see Widlöcher Daniel , “L'hystérie dépossédée”, Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, xvii (1978), 73–87.

Freud Sigmund , “Observation of a severe case of hemi-anesthesia in a hysterical male” (1886), Standard edition (ref. 50), i, 23–31; Freud , “Hysteria” (1888), Standard edition, i, 37–59; Freud , “Some points for a comparative study of organic and hysterical motor paralyses” (1893), Standard edition, i, 155–72; Freud , “On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomenon” (1893), Standard edition , iii, 25–39; Freud , “Extracts from the Fliess papers” (1892–99), Standard edition, i, 173–280; The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904 , translated and edited by Masson Jeffrey Moussaieff (London, 1985); Breuer Josef Freud Sigmund , Studies on hysteria (1895), Standard edition , ii; Freud , “Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses” (1896), Standard edition, iii, 141–56; Freud , “The aetiology of hysteria” (1896), Standard edition , iii, 187–221; and Freud , Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (1901; 1905), Standard edition, vii, 1–122. For a complete list of Freud's writings on hysteria, consult Studies on hysteria, Standard edition, ii, Appendix B, 310–11.

Jones Ernest , Sigmund Freud: Life and work, i: The young Freud, 1856–1900 (London, 1953), chapters 11 and 12; Clark Ronald W. , Freud: The man and the cause (London, 1980), 72–92, 130–3, 228–331; Gay Peter , Freud: A life for our time (New York, 1988), 63–74, 246–55.

Andersson Ola , Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis (Stockholm, 1962); Decker Hannah S. , Freud in Germany: Revolution and reaction in science, 1893–1907, Psychological issues , monograph 41 (New York, 1977), chapter 2; Fancher Raymond E. , Psychoanalytic psychology: The development of Freud's thought (New York, 1973), chapter 2; Levin Kenneth , Freud's early psychology of the neuroses: A historical perspective (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), chapters 3 and 4; Stewart Walter A. , Psychoanalysis: The first ten years, 1888–1898 (New York, 1967). See also Veith , Hysteria: History of a disease (ref. 7), 257–74 and Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 213–40.

Mitchell Juliet , Women: The longest revolution — Essays on feminism, literature and psychoanalysis (London, 1984), 300.

The Index-Catalogue of the library of the Surgeon-General's office indicates that Studien über Hysterie was one of 39 book-length works on hysteria to appear in the German language during the 1890s. These writings provide an important and unexplored context for Freud's early work.

Bercherie , Concepts freudiens (ref. 69), 18–101, 239–66.

Roudinesco Elisabeth , La bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en France, i (Paris, 1982), 21–84.

Sulloway Frank J. , Freud: Biologist of the mind (New York, 1979), 51–69.

Gedo John E. Sabshin Melvin Sadow Leo Schlessinger Nathan , “Studies on hysteria: A methodological evaluation”, in Gedo J. E. Pollack G. H. (eds), Freud: The fusion of science and humanism, in Psychological issues, monograph 34/36 (1976), 167–86 and Rubinstein Benjamin B. , “Freud's early theories of hysteria”, in Cohen R. S. Laudan L. (eds), Physics, philosophy and psychoanalysis: Essays in honor of Adolf Grünbaum (Dordrecht, 1983), 169–90.

Krohn Alan , Hysteria: The elusive neurosis , in Psychological issues, monograph 45/46 (New York, 1978).

Chertok Léon , “A l'occasion d'un centenaire Charcot: L'hystérie et l'hypnose”, Perspectives psychiatriques, xxi (1983), 81–89. See also Widlöcher , “Hystérie dépossédée” (ref. 75), 73–87 and Roudinesco , Histoire de la psychanalyse en France (ref. 82), 39ff.

Macmillan M. B. , “Delboeuf and Janet as influences in Freud's treatment of Emmy von N.”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xv, no. 4 (October, 1979), 299–309; Bercherie , Concepts freudiens (ref. 69), 250–6.

Knight Isabel F. , “Freud's ‘Project’: A theory for Studies on hysteria”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xx, no. 4 (October, 1984), 340–58.

Biéder J. , “La ‘communication préliminaire’ de 1893”, Annales médico-psychologiques, année 130, i, no. 3 (March, 1972), 401–6.

Carter K. Codell , “Germ theory, hysteria, and Freud's early work in psychopathology”, Medical history, xxiv (1980), 259–74.

Bercherie , Concepts freudiens (ref. 69), 241–2; Macmillan M. B. , “Freud and Janet on organic and hysterical paralyses: A mystery solved?” (work in progress).

Urban Bernd , “Schnitzler and Freud as doubles: Poetic intuition and early research on hysteria”, The psychoanalytic review, lxv, no. 1 (Spring, 1965), 131–65.

McGrath William J. , Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis: The politics of hysteria (Ithaca, New York, 1986).

Schorske Carl E. , “Politics and patricide in Freud's Interpretation of dreams”, American historical review, lxxviii (1975), 328–47.

McGrath presents this argument in the fourth chapter of his book, entitled, after one of Freud's scientific drafts, “The architecture of hysteria”, 152–96.

Goshen Charles , “The original case material of psychoanalysis”, American journal of psychiatry, cviii (1952), 829–34. Suzanne Reichard confirmed Goshen's rediagnoses in “A re-examination of ‘Studies in hysteria’”, Psychoanalytic quarterly, xxv (1956), 155–77.

Rieff Philip , Freud: The mind of the moralist (London, 1959), 11.

Breuer Freud , Studies on hysteria (ref. 76), 21–47.

Andersson Ola , “A supplement to Freud's case history of ‘Frau Emmy v. N.’ in Studies on hysteria 1895”, Scandinavian psychoanalytic review, ii (1979), 5–16.

Hollender Marc H. , “The case of Anna O.: A reformulation”, American journal of psychiatry, cxxxvii, no. 7 (July, 1980), 797–800.

Hurst Lindsay C. , “What was wrong with Anna O?”, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, lxxv (1982), 129–31.

Pappenheim Elise , “A postscript to the case of Anna O.”, Bulletin of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York, xviii, no. 8 (1981), 15; Wykert John , “Anna O. — A re-evaluation”, Psychiatric news, xv (issue of 2 May, 1980), 5, 22; Meissner W. W. , “A study on hysteria: Anna O. rediviva”. The annual of psychoanalysis, vii (New York, 1979), 17–52.

Rosenbaum Max Muroff Melvin , (eds), Anna O.: Fourteen contemporary reinterpretations (New York, 1984).

Muroff Melvin , “Anna O.: Psychoanalysis and group process theory”, ibid., 71–84.

Noshpitz Joseph D. , “Anna O. as seen by a child psychiatrist”, ibid., 65, 67.

Gargiulo Gerald J. , “Anna O.: An English object relations approach”, ibid., 149–60.

Stewart Walter A. , “Analytic biography of Anna O.”, ibid., 47–51.

Martorano Joseph T. , “The psychopharmacological treatment of Anna O.”, ibid., 85–100.

Spiegel John P. , “The case of Anna O.: Cultural aspects”, ibid., 57.

At least one contributor to the volume is keenly aware of the interpretive limitations of the data available for the case. See the remarks of James F. Masterson, “Reflections on Anna O.”, ibid., 42–46.

For recent rediagnoses of Freud's other hysterical patients see: Pierre Marty et al., “Der Fall Dora und der psychosomatische Gesichtspunkt”, Psyche, xxxiii, nos. 9–10 (September/October, 1979), 888–925; Hurst Lindsay C. , “Freud and the great neurosis”, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, lxxvi (1983), 57–60; de Boor Clemens Moersch Emma , “Emmy von N. — Eine Hysterie?”, Psyche, xxxiv, no. 4 (April, 1980), 265–79; Pappenheim Elise , “Freud and Gilles de la Tourette: Diagnostic speculations on ‘Frau Emmy von N.’”, International review of psycho-analysis, vii (1980), 265–77; Meissner W. W. , “Studies on hysteria — Frau Emmy von N.”, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, xlv, no. 1 (January, 1981), 1–19; and Meissner W. W. , “Studies on hysteria — Katharina”, Psychoanalytic quarterly, xlviii, no. 4 (October, 1979), 587–600.

Hirschmüller Albrecht , Physiologie und Psychoanalyse in Leben und Werk Josef Breuers (Tübingen, 1978).

Ellenberger Henri F. , “The story of Anna O.: A critical review with new data”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, viii, no. 3 (July, 1972), 267–79.

Hirschmüller , Physiologie und Psychoanalyse (ref. 112), 131–71, with documents concerning the case on 348–82.

If American psychiatrists have predominated in the practice of retrospective rediagnostics, German historians have led the way with historico-biographical reconstructionism. In addition to Hirschmüller's book, see Fichtner Gerhard Hirschmüller Albrecht , “Freuds ‘Katharina’ — Hintergrund, Entstehungsgeschichte und Bedeutung einer frühen psychoanalytischen Krankengeschichte”, Psyche, xxxix, no. 3 (March, 1985), 220–40; Wanner Oskar , “Die Moser vom ‘Charlottenfels’”, Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie, Neurochirurgie und Psychiatrie, cxxxi, no. 1 (1982), 55–68; and Wanner Oskar , “Sigmund Freud und der Fall Emmy von N.”, Schaffhauser Nachrichten, cv (issue of 6 May, 1977), 17–19. Among the work of other scholars, see the resourceful psychoanalytic sleuthing of Peter J. Swales in “Freud, his teacher, and the birth of psychoanalysis”, in Stepansky Paul (ed.), Freud: Appraisals and reappraisals , i (Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1986), 3–82 and Swales , “Freud, Katharina, and the first ‘wild analysis’”, in Stepansky Paul (ed.), Freud: Appraisals and reappraisals , iii (1988), 80–164. Henri Ellenberger was a pioneer in this line of work. In addition to his essay on Anna O., see “L'histoire d'Emmy von N.: Étude critique avec documents nouveaux”, L'Evolution psychiatrique, xlii (1977), 519–41. Finally, L. Z. Vogel's “The case of Elise Gomperz”, American journal of psychoanalysis, xlvi, no. 3 (Fall, 1986), 230–8 contains biographical information about a hysterical patient of Freud's not appearing in the Studies.

Orr-Andrawes Alison , “The case of Anna O.: A neuropsychiatric perspective”, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, xxxv (1987), 387–419. Orr-Andrawes is an instructor of clinical psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College in New York City.

Ibid., 408.

Ibid., 412.