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My choice of this general title does not imply any discussion of Freud's view on the attitude towards women (as a species) or his theory on their psychosexual development, or his abandoned (suppressed?) seduction theory, which these days has ignited controversy (Masson, 1984). Nor does it imply any discussion of women's liberation, except when this item might be implicit in my brief presentation of some of the women who all, in different and personal ways have been of importance in the start and further development of psychoanalysis–as historical persons in relation to the cause, and to the man.
Freud began and ended his life surrounded by women. During his lifetime, many women were his disciples. He had five sisters and three daughters. His youngest daughter also became disciple and the leader of the movement after his death. It is also remarkable that the patients in Studien über Hysterie (Breuer and Freud, 1895) were all women. The patient in Breuchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse (Freud, 1905) was a woman. In other words: The psychoanalytic pioneer patients were all women.
The case histories of these patients introduced not only psychoanalysis, a new discipline, to the world, but they were presented in a new way. In Epikrise, Frl. Elisabeth v.R. Freud stated: “I have not always been a psychotherapist. Like other neuropathologists, I was trained to employ local diagnoses and electro-prognosis, and it still strikes me as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science”.
These case histories are, in fact, a new form of literature, where the patients have “real” names like persons in plays and novels. They are still widely read and used for instruction and training in psychiatry and psychoanalysis.