FREUD CASE STUDY ON:

ANNA O-STUDY OF HYSTERIA

HUMAN BEHAVIOR
GROUP MEMBERS:
MALIHA ZUBAIR ASIB QURESHI
RABIA KHAN HUMZA BUKHARI
SUKAINA SALMAN RUMMAN EJAZ
MUHAMMAD SHAKIR ALI RAZA
ANNA O-STUDY OF HYSTERIA
FOLLOWING TOPICS WILL BE COVERED IN THE PRESENTATION:
• Introduction
• Clinical picture
• Other cases related to hysteria
 INTRODUCTION:

• This case was conducted by Sigmund frued published in 1905.

• The case study revolves around a girl name Dora.
• An eighteen-year-old girl suffers from a variety of hysterical symptoms.
• Freud theorizes that hysterical symptoms stem from either psychological
trauma or problems in the patient’s sexual life.
• Freud listens to stories about Dora's past and her family situation to get to the
cause of her hysterical symptoms.
• The incident with Herr K.
CLINICAL PICTURE AND SYMPTOMS OF
HYSTERIA

• Freud believes that Dora’s neurotic symptoms started in her

childhood.
• At age 8 Dora faced chronic dysponea, difficulty in breathing.
• At age 12 she began to suffer from migraine headaches and
nervous coughing, which lasts 2 to 5 weeks and cause a completed
loss of voice.
• Frued believes that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to
have influenced Dora hysteria, there must have been some
anologous event that happened prior.
CLINICAL PICTURE

• When Dora was 14, an incident associated with Herr K. happened.

• Herr K. embraced her and kissed her in his office.

• Dora felt disgusted at what Herr K. had done.

3. DEFENSES
• Freud found that some events and desires were often too frightening or painful
for his patients to acknowledge, and believed such information was locked away
in the unconscious mind. This can happen through. the process of repression
• Repression: when a feeling is hidden and forced from the consciousness to the
unconscious because it is seen as socially unacceptable
• Regression: falling back into an early state of mental/physical development
seen as "less demanding and safer"
• Projection: possessing a feeling that is deigned as socially unacceptable and
instead of facing it, that feeling or "unconscious urge" is seen in the actions of
other people.
• Reaction formation: acting the opposite way that the unconscious instructs a
person to behave, "often exaggerated and obsessive". For example, if a wife is
infatuated with a man who is not her husband, reaction formation may cause
her to – rather than cheat – become obsessed with showing her husband signs of
love and affection.
• Sublimation: seen as the most acceptable of the mechanisms, an expression of
anxiety in socially acceptable ways.
MODE OF TREATMENT-TALKING THERAPY

BREUER’S CURE:
• Breuer starts with ‘talking therapy’ by engaging the patient into
the conversations on daily basis.
• He talked about the problems in Anna’s life in search for the
psychological basis of hysteria.
• Many of Anna’s stories involved sitting at the bedside of a sick
person-echoing her experience of caring for her father.
• She recalled an occasion about holding a glass of water and her
nanny’s dog drank from it whom she didn’t like.
• This experience attributed to her inability to drink water, because
Anna formed a relationship between the water and a negative
event in her life.
The psychotherapy of hysteria:

• As the patient describes a traumatic event in the utmost details

the symptom of this trauma disappears.
• Freud then talks about the method of hypnosis as a tool in
understanding hysteria.
• Freud makes the point that the cathartic method cannot prevent
fresh symptoms.
• Neuroses that are acquired are primarily caused by sexual factors.
• 'Anxiety neurosis' to a condition that derives from an accumulation
of physical tension which originates with sexual tension.
• Importance of a correct diagnosis of hysteria.
CONCLUSION

• Breuer and Freud believed that bringing unconscious anxiety like

hallucinations and traumatic experiences to conscious attention
could overcome Anna symptoms.
• She was given a pet dog to look after and engaged in charity work
by helping ill people.
• She made a gradual recovery.