Biography of Bertha Pappenheim.

Bertha Pappenheim became a legend twice: first, in Vienna, under the pseudonym 'Anna O', when she cured herself of hysterical symptoms by telling fairy tales which she termed 'the talking cure', upon which Sigmund Freud based his theory of psychoanalysis; and then in Germany, as the founder of the first Jewish feminist movement.

Remembering Anna O. offers a devastating examination of the very foundations of psychanalytic theory and practice, which was born with an essay on the case of Anna O., a young woman afflicted with a severe hysteria. Borch-Jacobsen maintains that the cure of Anna O. is a myth and suggests that her symptoms were simulated to meet her doctor's expectations. This book reads like a scholarly thriller and has already created a sensation in France.

This early work by Sigmund Freud was originally published in 1893 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena' is a psychological essay on the causes of hysteria. Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6th May 1856, in the Moravian town of Príbor, now part of the Czech Republic. He studied a variety of subjects, including philosophy, physiology, and zoology, graduating with an MD in 1881. Freud made a huge and lasting contribution to the field of psychology with many of his methods still being used in modern psychoanalysis. He inspired much discussion on the wealth of theories he produced and the reactions to his works began a century of great psychological investigation.

Imagine growing up smart, ambitious, and queer in a home where your father Sigmund Freud thinks that women should aspire to be wives and calls lesbianism a gateway to mental illness. He also says that lesbianism is always caused by the father, and is usually curable by psychoanalysis. Then he analyzes you. Ultimately Anna Freud loved Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (heir to the Tiffany fortune) for 54 years. They raised a family together and became psychoanalysts in their own right, specializing in work with children. But first Anna had to navigate childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood in a famous family where her kind of romantic longings were considered dangerous. What was it like to grow up the lesbian daughter of “the great Sigmund Freud”? Aside from Anna’s sexuality and from her father’s intrusive psychoanalysis of her, what were the Freud family's most closely closeted skeletons? What is it about the birth of psychoanalysis that even today's psychoanalysts would prefer to keep secret? How did Anna defy her father so thoroughly while continuing to love him and learn from him? Weaving a grand tale out of a pile of crazy facts, Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story lets the pioneering child psychologist freely examine the forces that shaped her life.

In recent years historians of psychoanalysis have come to view Freud's case of Anna O. as a failure and have cast doubt on the very foundations of psychoanalysis itself. This new study challenges existing historical scholarship by providing an unparalleled review of the available evidence on the case and reaches new conclusions about its outcome.

In 1953, Freud biographer Ernest Jones revealed that the famous hysteric Anna O. was really Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the prolific author, German-Jewish feminist, pioneering social worker, and activist. Loentz directs attention away from the young woman who arguably invented the talking cure and back to Pappenheim and her post-Anna O. achievements, especially her writings, which reveal one of the most versatile, productive, influential, and controversial Jewish thinkers and leaders of her time.