Borch-Jacobson on Anna O. part 3
From “Anna O.: The First Tall Tale”:
We saw condemning evidence of Freud's theory in part 1 and part 2 of BJ's explanation of the psychoanalytic origin myth. BJ writes, “But did Bertha Pappenheim [Anna O.] do better whenever she could talk about the origin of her symptoms? Yes - and no” (19). Jein.
Anna O. “gained relief by telling fair tales of her own invention” (19). This “temporary remission” of symptoms continued through the 1881 implementation of the “talking cure” as a variation on the ‘fairy tale’ therapy. The talking cure aimed at “recounting the memories that supposedly were at the root of her symptoms” and the talking cure in fact provided some relief, but there were no grounds for believing that memory had anything to do with the relief (19). Lacan believed she was simply “‘verbalizing’ her hallucinations instead of acting them out,” not necessarily liberating repressed memories (19). In this sense Peter Swales concludes that the “cathartic treatment” had “exerted an essentially placebo or suggestive effect” (19). BJ remarks, “the treatment of Bertha Pappenheim bears an unmistakable resemblance to courses of magnetic treatment from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whereby patients prescribed for themselves the therapeutic procedures that would heal them and accurately predicted the moment of their own healing” (19). As for the odd introduction of a memory motif into the ‘fairy tale’ therapy, BJ says, “the theme of memory emerged only gradually over the course of treatment” (19).
Prior to Anna O.’s hydrophobia episode she had an episode which Breuer called her “stocking caprice” (quoted on 20). Anna O. refused to disrobe for bed, which was considered a hysterical symptom - she would complain in the morning that her stockings had not been removed, though she had protested the removal the night before. Anna O. told Breuer that she had really just kept her clothes on so she could sneak out of bed “to eavesdrop on her father” (quoted on 20). From what I gather it seems that her brother caught her once, prompting her to mask her clandestine agenda by deflecting with a tantrum about how her clothes had not been removed. Breuer says, “As soon as she had finished she began to cry out softly demanding why she was in bed with her stockings on. Then she took them off, and that was the last we saw of the stocking caprice” (quoted on 20). BJ argues that Studies on Hysteria “chose to pass over this first miraculous ‘healing’ in silence” because “Bertha’s nocturnal discovery by her brother” could not “easily be made to pass for the kind of ‘psychic trauma’ that Freud and Breuer had in mind in 1895” (20). BJ considers this “comical episode” to be “too obvious” to be used for defending the effectivity of the “cathartic cure” (20).
BJ notes another ‘fairy tale’ therapy without any reference to memory or trauma, with Anna O. “asking for bread and then refusing to eat it” (20). Breuer writes “this was a purely psychic inhibition proceeding from one of her phantasies, and when she narrated the phantasy the inhibition was discarded” (quoted on 20). Thus the theory of traumatic memory must have been “a theory that Breuer and Freud had adopted [from Charcot and the Salpêtrière school] in the meantime [1882-1895]” (20-21). Therefore Freud’s theory did not have an empirical basis, but “comes straight from Charcot” through “a self-serving revisionism that was anything but innocent” (21). “What a find example of Nachträglichkeit (Freud’s ‘aftermath-effect’): modern psychotherapy, with its emphasis on the curative powers of narration and memory, has as its founding narrative the biased rewriting of an older narrative, one of that tells only made-up stories. And what should we find but a false memory right at the heart of the modern myth of remembering” (21).
Also of interest - Jacques-Allain Miller on Philosophical Psychoanalysis
We saw condemning evidence of Freud's theory in part 1 and part 2 of BJ's explanation of the psychoanalytic origin myth. BJ writes, “But did Bertha Pappenheim [Anna O.] do better whenever she could talk about the origin of her symptoms? Yes - and no” (19). Jein.
Anna O. “gained relief by telling fair tales of her own invention” (19). This “temporary remission” of symptoms continued through the 1881 implementation of the “talking cure” as a variation on the ‘fairy tale’ therapy. The talking cure aimed at “recounting the memories that supposedly were at the root of her symptoms” and the talking cure in fact provided some relief, but there were no grounds for believing that memory had anything to do with the relief (19). Lacan believed she was simply “‘verbalizing’ her hallucinations instead of acting them out,” not necessarily liberating repressed memories (19). In this sense Peter Swales concludes that the “cathartic treatment” had “exerted an essentially placebo or suggestive effect” (19). BJ remarks, “the treatment of Bertha Pappenheim bears an unmistakable resemblance to courses of magnetic treatment from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whereby patients prescribed for themselves the therapeutic procedures that would heal them and accurately predicted the moment of their own healing” (19). As for the odd introduction of a memory motif into the ‘fairy tale’ therapy, BJ says, “the theme of memory emerged only gradually over the course of treatment” (19).
Prior to Anna O.’s hydrophobia episode she had an episode which Breuer called her “stocking caprice” (quoted on 20). Anna O. refused to disrobe for bed, which was considered a hysterical symptom - she would complain in the morning that her stockings had not been removed, though she had protested the removal the night before. Anna O. told Breuer that she had really just kept her clothes on so she could sneak out of bed “to eavesdrop on her father” (quoted on 20). From what I gather it seems that her brother caught her once, prompting her to mask her clandestine agenda by deflecting with a tantrum about how her clothes had not been removed. Breuer says, “As soon as she had finished she began to cry out softly demanding why she was in bed with her stockings on. Then she took them off, and that was the last we saw of the stocking caprice” (quoted on 20). BJ argues that Studies on Hysteria “chose to pass over this first miraculous ‘healing’ in silence” because “Bertha’s nocturnal discovery by her brother” could not “easily be made to pass for the kind of ‘psychic trauma’ that Freud and Breuer had in mind in 1895” (20). BJ considers this “comical episode” to be “too obvious” to be used for defending the effectivity of the “cathartic cure” (20).
BJ notes another ‘fairy tale’ therapy without any reference to memory or trauma, with Anna O. “asking for bread and then refusing to eat it” (20). Breuer writes “this was a purely psychic inhibition proceeding from one of her phantasies, and when she narrated the phantasy the inhibition was discarded” (quoted on 20). Thus the theory of traumatic memory must have been “a theory that Breuer and Freud had adopted [from Charcot and the Salpêtrière school] in the meantime [1882-1895]” (20-21). Therefore Freud’s theory did not have an empirical basis, but “comes straight from Charcot” through “a self-serving revisionism that was anything but innocent” (21). “What a find example of Nachträglichkeit (Freud’s ‘aftermath-effect’): modern psychotherapy, with its emphasis on the curative powers of narration and memory, has as its founding narrative the biased rewriting of an older narrative, one of that tells only made-up stories. And what should we find but a false memory right at the heart of the modern myth of remembering” (21).
Also of interest - Jacques-Allain Miller on Philosophical Psychoanalysis