The Maturation of the Legend: The Derivative Literature

Abstract

It is not intended as a slight to classify the secondary literature to be considered in this chapter as derivative, for it is indeed remarkable the extent to which recent accounts of the Anna O. case have taken first Jones’s and then Ellenberger’s reshaping of the story as both their foundation and their inspiration. However, while Jones has been repeatedly criticised along the lines that Ellenberger first pursued, it has largely gone unremarked that he himself set out a view of the Anna O. case that is implicitly critical of Breuer, and by extension (though to a lesser extent) of Freud himself, for in recent years this strain in Jones’s argument has been completely overshadowed by Ellenberger’s own commentary. While Ellenberger’s classic work The Discovery of the Unconscious has certainly not been immune to criticism, it has not been possible to find in the published literature any critical examination at all of his specific study of Anna O. Even those most sympathetic to the psychoanalytic project have tended to take Ellenberger’s work for granted, and where they have not simply ignored it, they have felt compelled to bend to its claims.

Mancher klopft mit dem Hammer an der Wand herum und glaubt, er treffe jedesmal den Nagel auf den Kopf.¹

J. W. von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen (Posth.)