Anna O, the case that inspired the creation of psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud He was a sharp-witted doctor who was fascinated by the enigmas of the human mind.. He was the creator of psychoanalysis and this completely modified what was known until then about reason and unreason. However, within his work the patient who went down in history with the name Anna O had great importance.

Freud was especially curious about the cases that medicine back then called “inexplicable”. There were several such patients in the famous Salpetriere Hospital. People who were blind or paralyzed without this disability having an identified physical origin and similar cases.

At that time, several of these cases were treated through hypnosis. Freud did the same. He learned the necessary techniques to carry it out and practiced it in his office. However, he noticed that his patients were cured, but the symptoms recurred later. Or they developed other substitute symptoms. For him and for Josef Breuer their teacher, everything seemed like a crossroads until they found themselves on the road with the Anna O case.

Anna O, Breuer and Freud

Josef Breuer was an expert on the subject of hysteria. He was also the most prominent figure in hypnosis clinic at that time. Freud became his apprentice and admired him deeply. Together they wrote the first lines in what would become the history of psychoanalysis. Anna O was a decisive case for both of them to advance their understanding of the human mind.

At that time, hysteria was seen as a women’s disease. They were supposed to sometimes pretend to have physical problems, just in order to get attention. Breuer was convinced that they were not lying and Freud thought the same. That is to say, neither of them thought that it was a simulation.

Anna O was a young woman of 21 years old, Austrian and from a wealthy family. She was a particularly intelligent and cultured girl. However, He had many symptoms extravagant. He would enter a kind of “trance” that she called “clouds.” She suffered hallucinations in which she saw snakes and skulls. She was silent. She was paralyzed. She couldn’t drink liquids. She sometimes forgot her mother tongue, German, and she could only speak in English or French.

Breuer began treating her when she had a persistent cough that left her exhausted. She also had paralysis in her face, arm and leg.. His father suffered from a tuberculous abscess and she was the one who had cared for him during his illness. However, she herself began to get sick.

Anna O and the word cure

Joseph Breuer hypnotized her, but noticed that he only got very chaotic stories. The second time he hypnotized her, he asked her if something was bothering her. Anna O responded with this phrase: “ajamais acht nobody bella mió please lieboehn nuit”. It was something crazy. A prayer said in five languages. Breuer intuitively decided that he would treat Anna O without hypnosis..

Since then, Breuer focused treatment using listening as the main tool. He encouraged Anna O to speak up and say whatever came to her mind.. The symptoms improved and the foundations for what would become the free association method appeared.

She began calling these sessions “chimney sweeps” or “talking cures.”. Under this last meaning, psychoanalysis was identified in history. Breuer, for his part, called this procedure the “cathartic method.”

Anna O’s cure and the beginning of psychoanalysis

The therapeutic process with Anna O had many ups and downs. Eventually, she fell in love with Breuer and developed a strong dependence on him. He was also attracted to her. Since he was married, he decided to end the treatment. Time after, In these events, Freud discovered the phenomenon of “transference” and the sexual desire that was in the background of hysteria..

Anna O had two hospitalizations and several relapses. Even so, there was a point when she managed to get all the symptoms that afflicted her under control. She became an activist for women’s and children’s rights.. She was also a writer and translator of some importance. Her life took a course that could be called “normal.”

Eleven years later, Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud published one of the works in which psychoanalysis already appears as an approach. differentiated. This is the book “Studies on Hysteria”. The Anna O case is, finally, the most illustrative of this work. Many go so far as to say, symbolically of course, that it was hysteria and Anna O who invented psychoanalysis.

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