The 1882 Documents

Abstract

It is undeniable that the historical study of the Anna O. case was transformed when Henri Ellenberger (1972) managed to trace in the archives of the Sanatorium Bellevue in the Swiss town of Kreuzlingen a transcript of an original case report on Bertha Pappenheim written by Breuer, and again when Albrecht Hirschmüller (1989), building on Ellenberger’s achievements, found and published other relevant documents, including a further, supplementary report by Breuer. The original case report, apparently written in mid-1882 after Breuer had completed his treatment of Anna O., but before her stay in Kreuzlingen, is important because it serves as a point of comparison with what Breuer eventually came to publish in 1895, and has the potential either to lend additional credence to the published version of the case or to undermine it. And this is the way that the first report is most often read by scholars: using it only in relation to the published version and not considering it as a text in itself. The difference is subtle, but important. If one reads a document solely in conjunction with another, then there is a danger of seeing only the points in that first text which have a marked relation to or disjunction from the second, and of missing its own internal relations and tensions which have a standing that is independent of any other particular external reference point.

Der Augenblick ist eine Art von Publikum: man muß ihn betrügen, daß er glaube, man tue was, dann läßt er uns gewähren und im Geheimen fortführen, worüber seine Enkel erstaunen müssen.¹

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