Chapter 3. History of Dissociation (2) From Hysteria to Dissociation (8)

As I stated before, Charcot still kept his own version of the lay belief that hysteria is caused by woman’s sexual frustration. However, his acumen allowed him to see further than that. He knew that hysteria as women’s illness has something in common with the “railroad spine”.
Charcot’s bad influence on Freud
Let us see Freud‘s view on hysteria. Freud heard of Anna O., a hysterical patient that his colleague Joseph Breuer treated from 1880~1882 and got fascinated by the case. He then visited Paris from fall 1885 to early spring 1986 to study under Charcot. Originally a researcher of neurology, Freud respected Charcot, a great neurologist who was on the top of his fame. Freud had his original encounter with hysterical patients in Charcot’s lecture. Freud was affected by Charcot to the point of naming his first son after his master later on (Martin Freud).
After his return to Vienna, Freud demonstrated a hysterical case in an academic meeting. He followed Charcot’s teaching and showed a male hysterical patient. The response from the audience was not so favorable, perhaps due to the fact that what Freud asserted was against common belief held by Viennese physicians regarding hysteria.
Freud then developed his theory of hysteria with his own style. What Freud inherited from Charcot was the trauma theory of hysteria: that hysteria is caused by psychological trauma. Freud believed that hysterical patients had a history of being sexually seduced by adults in their childhood. This theory that is commonly called Freud’s “seduction theory” is not typically exemplified in the cases discussed in the “Studies of Hysteria” written with Breuer in 1895.