Remembering Anna O.

by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

Remembering Anna O. offers a devastating examination of the very foundations of psychoanalytic theory and practice, which was born with the publication of Breuer and Freud's Studies on Hysteria in 1895. Breuer described the case of Anna O., a young woman afflicted with a severe hysteria whom he had cured of her symptoms by having her recount under hypnosis the traumatic events that precipitated her illness.

Drawing on the most recent Freud scholarship and on long-secret documents, Borch-Jacobsen demonstrates, however, that Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim) was never cured by Breuer's "talking cure" and that both Breuer and Freud knowingly falsified the historical record. Borch-Jacobsen points out the numerous inconsistencies in Breuer's account that suggests that Anna O.'s symptoms were simulated to meet Breuer's theoretical expectations and that her famed "reminiscences" were in fact fictitious memories induced by Breuer in the course of a hypnotic treatment.

138 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 1996

About the author

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (born 1951), is Professor of Comparative Literature and French at the University of Washington in Seattle. Born to Danish parents, he began his studies in France, where he studied philosophy with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, two philosophers close in thought to, and in dialogue with, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan.
In 1981 at the University of Strasbourg he submitted his doctoral dissertation on The Freudian Subject and then began teaching in the department of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes University in Paris, where Jacques Lacan had first made his mark.
He is the author of many works on the history and philosophy of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and hypnosis. His constructivist analysis of the co-production of psychical "facts" emphasises the accuracy of historical accounts of mental disorders. He is known for his positions in virulent debates about psychoanalysis – called the Freud Wars – especially with regard to his 2005 publication of Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis"). In a review entitled Folies à plusieurs. De l'hystérie à la dépression ("Many madnesses. From hysteria to depression"), Pierre-Henri Castel calls Borch-Jacobsen "one of the most polemic thinkers with regard to the Freud Wars".

Reviews

[Mazola1 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Remembering Anna O. is a critical look at a mythical case -- that of the patient whose treatment reputedly led to the discvoery of the "talking cure." The case of Anna O. has already been thoroughly debunked many times before, with great doubt being cast on the veracity of the accounts of the case given by Freud and Josef Breuer, whose patient she was.

Nonetheless, Borch-Jacobsen, a professor of French and Comparative Literature, adds his two cents. Jacobsen concludes that Anna O. was not cured, the details and course of her treatment were not accurately reported, Brueur was "a rather gullible Viennese doctor," taken in by "a gifted simulator," who told the fairy tales the doctor wanted to hear, and the so-called founding narrative of psychoanalysis is nothing more than a myth and "a fish story of Freud's."

The book, while scholarly, is somewhat of a chore to read, and although written by an author with an axe to grind, still seems to be quite pointless. It doesn't really matter if Jacobsen is right that the details of the case were fudged because Jacobsen vehemently believes that psychoanalysis is a "derealized universe" in which interpretation passes for reality and fiction is taken for truth. He uses his interpretation of the case of Anna O. to advance that viewpoint. That's convenient, but no doubt Jacobsen would have believed that even if there never had been an Anna O. for him to analyse.

[Socrates · Rating 5 out of 5]

抽出一大批新材料，分析Breuer、Freud的信件手稿，疗养院的记录，得出的结论是Anna O这个精神分析理论的奠基病例包含多少欺骗。排除潜在解释也有力。这本书展示了历史认识论作为非科学手段如何介入科学叙事。和Block学习经验科学进路的心灵哲学，一直苦想这类研究需要补充一个视角，现在看来即历史认识论：心理学的实验者和被试者会产生无数影响实验结果的偶然因素，采纳心理学成果的心灵哲学研究也要相应的置于历史认识论的审视下。