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Britton's paper appeared on the IJP web-site from 13 January until 19 March, and was published in the journal in 1999, 80: 1-15. The discussion began slowly but gained momentum rapidly, following several contributions on the interesting clinical questions raised. Using the case of Anna O and one of his own, Britton postulates that a feature of hysteria is the use of projective identification by the patient to become in phantasy one or other member of the primal couple. A symbolic version of the primal scene between patient and analyst may then be enacted in the context of the erotic transference–countertransference that characterises these cases. Britton suggests that what we know now about the case of Anna O makes better sense in the light of modern psychoanalysis.
Freud privately divulged undisclosed details of the Breuer–Pappenheim case to Ernest Jones who included them in his biography of Freud (Jones, 1953, pp. 246-8). However, in one crucial detail Jones remembered the story wrongly; namely the timing of Breuer's wife's pregnancy. The conception of the child did not follow the termination of Bertha Pappenheim's treatment, as Jones wrote, but ran in parallel with it (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 264). The child was born on 11 March 1882 when Anna O was still in treatment. Britton suggests that correction of the timing of the pregnancy enables us to make more sense of the case.
In the light of this Britton offers a concise, detailed review of the story of Bertha Pappenheim and her treatment at the hands of Breuer (see paper). He highlights the crucial moment among many when Breuer and his wife went away, during which month their daughter was conceived. Anna O was an intimate of the Breuer circle and would have discovered the existence of the pregnancy. Britton points out that it is in this context that Anna O obliterated the present in her hysterical states and returned in daydream to living in the previous year, behaving as if she were in her old room. In the spring of