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It is always a valuable exercise to return to the early case material through which Freud developed some of his fundamental insights. This is particularly true of the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1893-1895), which lie so close to the origins of psychoanalysis and which had such a pregnant influence on Freud's early thinking. These cases have remained a continual challenge to psychoanalytic reflection, even as they proved to be both challenging and stimulating to Freud himself as he dealt with them and thought about them. The process of psychoanalytic reflection about these cases has by no means reached any significant closure. Rather, the reflection must go on as a means of reminding ourselves what we have learned since Freud's early adventures and what is yet to be learned.
In many ways, Anna O., who was later to become known as Bertha Pappenheim, one of the founders and significant figures of the German social-work movement, continues to exercise the same fascination on later generations of analysts that she had for Breuer and Freud. It was she who described Breuer's cathartic procedure as the “talking cure” and as “chimney sweeping.” The interest in the case is also extended by the fact that,