The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. II (1893-1895), Studies on hysteria 9780099426530, 0099426536

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THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD

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VOLUME II

S IG U M ND F R E U D I N 1 9 8 1

THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF

SIGMUND FREUD Translated from the German under the General Editorship of JAMES STRACHEY In Collaboration wit!,, ANNA FREUD Assisted �v ALIX STRACHEY and ALAN TYSON VOLUME II (1893-1895)

Studies on Hysteria by

JOSEF BREUER AND SIGMUND FREUD

LONDON THE

HOGARTH PRESS

AND TIIE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

PUBLIIHBD BY THE HOGARTH PREIS I.IIIITBD LONDON

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CLAREE, IRWIN AND CO. LTD 0 TORONTO

!)

77zis EdititJn first Published in 1955 Reprinted 1957, 196a, 1964, 1968, 197r, '}1973, 1975, 1978 and 1981 1·

L':J lSBN O 70IR 0067 7

All rights reserved. No part of this publica­ tion may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo­ copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Hogarth Press Ltd. TRANSLATION AND EDITORIAL MATTER @ THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANGELA RICHARDS

1955

PlllNTJtD AND BOUND IN GllBAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME

CONTENTS VOLUME TWO

STUDIES ON HYSTERIA (1893-1895) Editor's Introduction

page ix

Preface to the First Edition

xxix

Preface to the Second Edition

xxxi

I ON THE PSYCHICAL MECHANISM OF HYSTERICAL PHENOMENA: PRELIMINARY COM• MUNICATION (1893) (Breuer and Freud)

n

CASE HISTORIES (1) Fraulein Anna 0. {Breuer) (2) Frau Emmy von N. {Freud) (3) Miss Lucy R. (Freud) (4) Katharina --(Freud) (5) Fraulein Elisabeth von R. (Freud)

III THEORETICAL (Breuer) (1) Are All Hysterical Phenomena Ideogenic? (2) Intracerebral Tonic Excitation-Affects (3) Hysterical Conversion (4) Hypnoid States (5) Unconscious Ideas and Ideas Inadmissible to Consciousness-Splitting of the Mind (6) Innate Disposition-Development of Hysteria

1

19

21 48 106

125 135 183 186

192 203 215

IV THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF HYSTERIA {Freud)

222 240 253

APPENDIX A: The Chronology of the Case of Frau Emmy von N.

307

APPENDIX B: List of Writings by Freud dealing prin310 cipally with Conversion Hysteria BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX

313

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

321 323

GENERAL INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS Sigmund Freud in 1891 (Aet. 35) Josef Breuer in 1897 (A.et. 55)

Frontispi,ce Fadng page 185

STUDIES ON HYSTERIA BREUER AND FREUD (1893-1895)

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION (A) UBER DEN PSYCHISCHEN MECHANISMUS HYSTERISCHER PHANOMENE (VOR.LAUFIGE MITTEILUNG)

(a) GERMAN EomoNs: 1893 Neural. Centralbl., 12 (1), 4-10 (Sections I-II), and 12

(2), 43-7 (Sections III-V). (January 1 and 15.) 1893 Wien. med. Blatter, 16 (3), 33-5 (Sections I-II), and 16 (4), 49-51 (Sections III-V). (January 19 and 26.) 1895, etc. In Studien aber Hysterie. (See below.) 1906 S.K.S.N., I, 14-29. (1911, 2nd. ed.; 1920, 3rd. ed.; 1922, 4th. ed.)

(b)

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:

'The Psychic Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (Preliminary Communication)' 1909 S.P.H., 1-13. (Tr. A. A. Brill.) (1912, 2nd. ed.; 1920, 3rd. ed.) 1936 In Studies in Hysteria. (See below.)

1924

'On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena' C.P., 1, 24--41. (Tr.J. Rickman.) (B) STUDIEN 'OBER HYSTERIE

(a) GERMAN

1895 1909

1916 1922 1925 1952

EDITIONS:

Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke. Pp. v + 269. 2nd. ed. Same publishers. (Unchanged, but with new preface.) Pp. vii + 269. 3rd. ed. Same publishers. (Unchanged.) Pp. vii + 269. 4th. ed. Same publishers. (Unchanged.) Pp. vii + 269. G.S., 1, 3-238. (Omitting Breuer's contributions; with extra footnotes by Freud.) G.W., 1, 77-312, (Reprint of 1925.) ix

STUDIES ON HYSTERIA

(b) 1909

1936

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:

S.P.H.,

Studies in Hysteria

1-120. (1912, 2nd. ed.; 1920, 3rd. ed.; 1922, 4th. ed.) (Tr. A. A. Brill.) (In part only: omitting the case histories of Fraulein Anna 0., Frau Emmy von N. and Katharina, as well as Breuer's theo­ retical chapter.) New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. (Monograph Series No. 61.) Pp. ix 241. (Tr. A. A. Brill.) (Complete, except for omitting Freud's extra footnotes of 1925.)

+

The present, entirely new and complete translation by James and Alix Strachey includes Breuer's contributions, but is otherwise based on the German edition of 1925, containing Freud's extra footnotes. The omission of Breuer's contribu­ tions from the two German collected editions (G.S. and G.W.) led to some necessary changes and additional footnotes in them, where references had been made by Freud in the original edition to the omitted portions. In these collected editions, too, the numbering of the case histories was altered, owing to the absence of that of Anna 0. All these changes are disregarded in the present translation.-Abstracts both of the 'Preliminary Communication' and of the main volume were included in Freud's early collection of abstracts of his own works (1897b, Nos. XXIV and XXXI).

(1) SOME HlsTORICAL NOTES ON THE STUDIES

The history of the writing of this book is known to us in some detail. Breuer's treatment of Fraulein Anna 0., on which the whole work was founded, took place between 1880 and 1882. By that time Josef Breuer (1842-1925) already had a high reputation in Vienna both as a physician with a large practice and as a man of scientific attainments, while Sigmund Freud (18561939) was only just qualifying as a doctor. 1 The two men had,

Much of the material in what follows is derived from EmestJones's life of Freud (Vol. I, and especially Chapter XI). 1

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

xi

however, already been friends for some years. The treatment ended early in June, 1882, and in the following November Breuer related the remarkable story to Freud, who (though at that time his main interests were centred on the anatomy of the nervous system) was greatly impressed by it. So much so, indeed, that when, some three years later, he was studying in Paris under Charcot, he reported the case to him. 'But the great man showed no interest in my first outline of the subject, so that I never returned to it and allowed it to pass from my mind.' (An Autobiographical Study, 1925d, Chapter II.) Freud's studies under Charcot had centred largely on hys­ teria, and when he was back in Vienna in 1886 and settled down to establish a practice in nervous diseases, hysteria pro­ vided a large proportion of his clientele. To begin with he relied on such currently recommended methods of treatment as hydrotherapy, electro-therapy, massage and the Weir Mitchell rest-cure. But when these proved unsatisfactory his thoughts turned elsewhere. 'During the last few weeks', he writes to his friend Fliess on December 28, 1887, 'I have taken up hypnosis and have had all sorts of small but remarkable successes.' (Freud, 1950a, Letter 2.) And he has given us a detailed account of one successful treatment of this kind (1892-3h). But the case of Anna 0. was still at the back of his mind, and 'from the first', he tells us ( 1925d) 'I made use of hypnosis in another manner, apart from hypnotic suggestion'. This 'other manner' was the cathartic method, which is the subject of the present volume. The case of Frau Emmy von N. was the first one, as we learn from Freud (pp. 48 and 284), which he treated by the cathartic method.1 In a footnote added to the book in 1925 he qualifies this and says it was the first case in which he made use of that method 'to a large extent' (p. 105); and it is true that at this early date he was still constantly employing hypnosis in the conventional manner-for giving direct therapeutic sug­ gestions. At about this time, indeed, his interest in hypnotic suggestion was strong enough to lead him to translate one of Bemheim's books in 1888 and another in 1892, as well as to 1 A remark on p. 103 almost seems to imply, on the other hand, that the case of Frau Cacilie M. (mentioned below) preceded that of Frau Emmy. But this impression may perhaps be due to an ambiguity in the phrasing of the sentence.

STUDIES ON HYSTERIA

pay a visit of some weeks to the clinics of Liebeault and Bern­ heim at Nancy in the summer of 1889. The extent to which he was using therapeutic suggestion in the case of Frau Emmy is shown very clearly by his day-to-day report of the first two or three weeks of the treatment, reproduced by him from 'the notes which I made each evening' (p. 48). We cannot un­ luckily be certain when he began this case (see Appendix A., p. 307); it was in May either of 1888 or of 1889-that is, either about four or about sixteen months after he had first 'taken up hypnotism'. The treatment ended a year later, in the summer of 1889 or 1890. In either alternative, there is a considerable gap before the date of the next case history (in chronological order, though not in order of presentation). This was the case of Fraulein Elisabeth von R., which began in the autumn of 1892 (p. 135) and which Freud describes (p. 139) as his 'first full-length analysis of a hysteria'. It was soon followed by that of Miss Lucy R., which began at the end of the same year (p. 106).1 No date is assigned to the remaining case, that of Katharina (p. 125). But in the interval between 1889 and 1892 Freud certainly had experience with other cases. In particular there was that of Frau Cacilie M., whom he 'got to know far more thoroughly than any of the other patients mentioned in these studies' (p. 69 n.) but whose case could not be reported in detail owing to 'personal considerations'. She is however frequently discussed by Freud, as well as by Breuer, in the course of the volume, and we learn (p. 178) from Freud that 'it was the study of this remarkable case, jointly with Breuer, that led directly to the publication of our "Preliminary Communication" '. 11 1 It is to be noted that neither of these last two anal es had been ys more than started at the time of the publication of the 'Preliminary Communication'. 1 The question of when it was that Freud first began using the cathartic method is complicated still further by a statement made by him in 1916. The circumstances were these. At the International Medical Congress held in London in 1913, Pierre Janet had dis­ tinguished himself by making an absurdly ignorant and unfair attack on Freud and psycho-analysis. A reply was published by Ernest Jones in the Journal