Professor Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen of the University of Washington, the author of this book, is on the attack. His criticisms are sometimes justified, but his vituperation about events that occurred more than one hundred years ago, and more recent lapses, is not. Among the victims of Borch-Jacobsen's assaults are Freud, Josef Breuer, Ernest Jones, and current analysts who, he says, distort the truth about Anna O.

Anna O., the reader will recall, is the pseudonym for Bertha Pappenheim, the patient whom Breuer treated for a serious hysterical disorder in 1881-1882. She was plagued by muscular spasms, headaches, paresis, disturbances of speech, hallucinations, absences, and depression. Breuer's treatment—a combination of hypnosis to search