Chapter 3. History of Dissociation (2) From Hysteria to Dissociation (9)

Let us look into ”Study of Hysteria.” The famous case Anna O. suffered from “nervous cough” and choking sensations among other somatic complaints and had symptoms of not being able to drink a glass of water. During her therapy, Anna remembered an episode of a lady whose little dog drunk out of a glass. She found it disgusting and then became unable to drink a glass of water. When this memory was recovered, Anna O’s symptoms disappeared. The remembered episode had a nuance of trauma, but the case report was written by Breuer, not Freud.
How about Miss Lucy R.’s case treated by Freud himself? Miss Lucy is the second case study presented by Freud in Studies on Hysteria. Lucy was a young British governess who developed olfactory hallucinations of the smell of "burnt pudding." Freud helped Lucy realize that she was in love with the widower whose children she cared for. Later on, the smell of burned pudding had been replaced by the smell of cigar smoke. Freud associated the symptoms with a scene where her employer had scolded her violently for having allowed a female visitor to kiss his children.
It is not clear what kind of trauma is involved in Miss Lucy’s case. Rather, Freud seems to have been based on libidinal theory in her treatment.
It was in “the Aetiology of Hysteria”(Freud, 1896) that Freud forcibly pushed forward his trauma theory. It appeared that he practically convinced his patients with the traumatic aetiology of their illness.


Before they come for analysis the patients know nothing about these scenes [of sexual trauma]. They are indignant as a rule if we warn them that such scenes are going to emerge. Only the strongest compulsion of the treatment can induce them to embark on a reproduction of them. … even after they have gone through them once more in such a convincing manner，they still attempt to withhold belief from them，by emphasizing the fact that，un like what happens in the case of other forgotten material，they have no feeling of remembering the scenes.(Freud, SE.3, p. 204)