Studies in Hysteria

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Penguin, Jun 29, 2004 - Psychology - 368 pages
Hysteria—the tormenting of the body by the troubled mind—is among the most pervasive of human disorders; yet, at the same time, it is the most elusive. Freud’s recognition that hysteria stemmed from traumas in the patient’s past transformed the way we think about sexuality. Studies in Hysteria is one of the founding texts of psychoanalysis, revolutionizing our understanding of love, desire, and the human psyche. As full of compassionate human interest as of scientific insight, these case histories are also remarkable, revelatory works of literature.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Contents

On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena Preliminary Statement
5
Case Histories
23
Frälulein Anna O Breuer
25
Frau Emmy von N Freud
51
Miss Lucy R Freud
109
Katharina Freud
128
Fräulein Elisabeth von R Freud
139
Theoretical Issues Breuer
187
Intracerebral Tonic Excitation Affects
196
Hysterical Conversion
205
Hypnoid States
216
Ideas that are Unconscious or Inadmissible to Consciousness Splitting of the Psyche
223
Innate Disposition The Development of Hysteria
240
On the Psychotherapy of Hysteria Freud
255
Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality Freud
307
Copyright

Are All Hysterical Phenomena Ideogenic?
190

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Page xxxv - Unlike a work of literature, translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one.142 Translation can be bad translation — mistranslation — but if it is understood as a process of approximation, the criteria by which better translations are distinguished emphasize opacity and...
Page x - On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1914) and An Autobiographical Study (1925), to the moment of the Studies, now retrospectively seen as that of the origin or birth of psychoanalysis.
Page xvii - I am aware that no analyst can read this case history to-day without a smile of pity. But it should be borne in mind that this was the first case in which I employed the cathartic procedure to a large extent.

About the author (2004)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was born in Moravia and lived in Vienna between the ages of four and eighty-two. In 1938 Hitler's invasion of Austria forced him to seek asylum in London, where he died the following year. Freud's career began with several years of brilliant work on the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. He was almost thirty when, after a period of study under Charcot in Paris, his interests first turned to psychology, and another ten years of clinical work in Vienna (at first in collaboration with Breuer, an older colleague) saw the birth of his creation: psychoanalysis. This began simply as a method of treating neurotic patients by investigating their minds, but it quickly grew into an accumulation of knowledge about the workings of the mind in general, whether sick or healthy. Freud was thus able to demonstrate the normal development of the sexual instinct in childhood and, largely on the basis of an examination of dreams, arrived at his fundamental discovery of the unconscious forces that influence our everyday thoughts and actions. Freud's life was uneventful, but his ideas have shaped not only many specialist disciplines, but the whole intellectual climate of the last half-century.

Nicola Luckhurst is a lecturer in literature at Goldsmith’s College, University of London.

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