Who Is Anna O.?
Anna O. was the alias for Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936), whose case study appears in the 1895 book Studies on Hysteria by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. Although Anna O. inspired Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the facts of her case remain foggy. What type of disorder did she have, and did psychoanalytic methods really help her? Answers to these questions are still up in the air (Hurst, 1982).