Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Dr. Josef Breuer, who published her case study in the book "Studies on Hysteria," written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), an Austrian-Jewish feminist woman and founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women).
Contents
Anna O. was treated by Breuer for a severe coughing condition, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and vision, hearing and speech disorders, as well as hallucinations and loss of consciousness. Anna was diagnosed with hysteria. Freud argued that his illness was a consequence of resentment for his father's real and physical illness that later led to his death.
His treatment is considered the principle of psychoanalysis.
Breuer observed that as Anna experienced her "absences" (with radical personality changes accompanied by pictures of confusion), she muttered words or phrases to herself. In his treatment he carried out various hypnosis works to find out more about his disorder and found that these words were, according to him, "deeply melancholic fantasies ... sometimes characterized by a poetic beauty". This is how “free association” arose, where the hypnosis sessions with Breuer, Anna focused on talking, letting the thoughts flow, saying whatever came to mind..
Anna had a younger brother, Wilhelm Pappenheim, and two older sisters. In 1867, when he was only 8 years old, his sister, Henriette, died of tuberculosis..
At the time and the society in which Anna grew up, opportunities for women were very limited, and she had to drop out of school to undertake other activities such as sewing, instead of continuing her education..
In 1880, Anna's father contracted tuberculosis and Anna took care of him while he was bedridden. Unfortunately, his father's illness was fatal and he died in April of the following year. However, it was while he had been ill that his daughter also fell ill, albeit with different symptoms. It was then that Anna began consulting Josef Breuer for symptoms related to her illness..
Freud observed that, prior to her illness, Anna had lived a healthy life and was a highly intelligent woman with an active and dreamy imagination. However, her dedication to caring for her ailing father began to take its toll on her to the point where Anna also became ill..
Breuer summarizes Anna O.'s illness in four stages:
This stage runs from July 1880 to approximately December 10 of that same year, when Anna's illness begins to emerge clearly. Freud states that in other patients the signs of the onset of the disease would not be perceptible, but the exceptional symptoms seen in Anna make this phase clearly observable by others.
Here the symptoms are at their peak, but at the same time Anna begins to show a certain recovery thanks to the treatment, unfortunately this recovery was interrupted in April 1881, when her sick father died. This fact affected Anna seriously and on June 7, 1881, she began to show suicidal tendencies..
Between April and December 1881, Anna begins to experience periodic sleepwalking, but her behavior is apparently normal..
Breuer states that, after her treatment, Anna made a slow recovery from her illness, which lasted until June 1882.
The symptoms exhibited by Anna herself throughout the process varied widely, from a cough to various behavioral symptoms, including sleepwalking. These are some examples:
Anna was diagnosed with hysteria, and spent much of her life in a state of anxiety and experiencing hallucinations, such as seeing skeletons and black snakes, possibly as a result of seeing her own confused state. During the day he was habitually in a state of discomfort, crying and mental "torment".
Freud observed that when she was in a state of deep hypnosis, she was able to describe the daily hallucinations through this trance state, and on the days that she was able to show them, she slept better at night and was able to wake up more. quietly.
Realizing the benefits that the release of anxious thoughts had on Anna, Breuer used this treatment on a regular basis and was described as "speech therapy or cure", prompting Anna to participate in conversations about her daily life and her problems. , in search of a psychological basis for hysteria.
This custom of Anna's storytelling provided Breuer an intriguing insight into her state of mind. These fairy tales as he called them, because they reminded him of the work of Hans Christian Anderson and were generally unhappy in character, seemed to echo Anna's experiences in caring for her father.
He also transmitted a dream about a black snake approaching the bed of a sick person and how she felt paralyzed and was unable to protect the patient from the terrible creature. Freud concluded that the paralysis she experienced was actually linked to what she had experienced in her state of anxiety during sleep.
During her meetings with her therapist, Anna also recalled an occasion when she was younger and had a glass of water. She explained seeing her babysitter's dog, which she did not like, come over to drink from her glass, making her feel repulsed at the idea of sharing her glass with the dog. Breuer attributes this traumatic experience to his later inability to drink water; Anna had formed an association between the water and the negative event earlier in her life.
Breuer and Freud believed that reliving unconscious anxieties, such as hallucinations and traumatic experiences, and making them conscious, could help Anna overcome related symptoms. Over time, her problems ceased and a gradual recovery was achieved, she was given a pet dog to care for and participated in charity work helping other sick people..
Bertha Pappenheim's (Anna O) disease generated a medical history that was to greatly influence the ideas of Breuer and Freud, in particular, their psychodynamic approach.
Anna's treatment placed so much emphasis on the impact of previous traumas and subconscious ideas on the mind, that it resulted in the use of the "speech cure", along with hypnosis and regression, to identify possible causes of illnesses. mental.
Later in life, Anna became a prominent figure in the feminist movement in Austria and Germany, and founded the League of Jewish Women in 1904 and was an active advocate for the cause until her death in 1936..
Yet No Comments