Breuer and Freud present in this book a groundbreaking perspective on hysteria for their time, and simultaneously, the first framework for the emergence of psychoanalytic theory. Hysterical women are no longer seen as degenerate or mentally deficient, as earlier psychiatric traditions suggested.

As anxiety, trauma, and painful memories torment their painful and uncomfortable bodies, the mechanism of hysteria will be studied in the critical relationship between the mental and the physical, between experience, memory, and symptom. The unconscious is now a given, while for the first time, regarding Freud, sexuality is recognized as a determining factor.

For the first time, concepts such as investment, resistance, and repression will also emerge. Hypnosis will be merely a temporary technical support, which will give way to the cathartic method, and soon, the great adventure of psychoanalysis is ready to begin.

“I have no doubt that fate could relieve you of your ailments more easily than I could: but you will be convinced that you have gained much when we manage to transform your hysterical distress into ordinary misfortune. In the face of this, you will be able to defend yourself with a mental life that has regained its health.”

Sigmund Freud