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Paul Stepansky and The Analytic Press have launched a new series of Freud studies, variously informed by archival research, by fresh speculations, and by revisionist reinterpretations, "irrespective of the disciplinary affinities and personal Weltanschauungen of their authors—irrespective, that is, of whose feathers may be ruffled by their work" (p. xvi). The range and feather-ruffling potential of the series is represented by a first volume that opens with a lengthy article by Peter Swales and closes with a short one by John Gedo.
In "Freud: His Teacher and the Birth of Psychoanalysis," Swales sketches the life of Anna von Lieben, with much evidence that she was both the patient referred to as Cäcilie M. in the Studies on Hysteria and the patient Freud described in the autobiographical study as having led him to realize that a deep hypnotic trance was not necessary for catharsis. Swales's argument is convincing, though one is reminded that misidentification of Cäcilie M. began with Fliess ninety years ago.1
Swales offers a less carefully drawn "scenario" of Anna von Lieben's three-year treatment as consisting of daily psychic catharsis, pressure, massage, and probably occasional morphine injections. Still more questionable is Swales's assessment of Anna von Lieben's impact on later psychoanalytic work. Certainly, she was a major source of the young Freud's experience in case management and in the cathartic method, but Swales claims much more for her: that she showed Freud the value of free association, the beginnings of dream interpretation, the role of unconscious sexual symbolism, the tendency of associations to move toward childhood events, conversion, counterwill, conflict, defense, and possibly the clue to the interpretation of wit and superstition. He says she presented Freud with the unconscious "on a silver platter." Finally, the available biographical sources describe her as obese and often indolent, spending much of her waking adult life on a chaise