STUDIES ON HYSTERIA
(1893-1895)

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION In 1893 we published a ‘Preliminary Communication’¹ on a new method of examining and treating hysterical phenomena. To this we added as concisely as possible the theoretical conclusions at which we had arrived. We are here reprinting this ‘Preliminary Communication’ to serve as the thesis which it is our purpose to illustrate and prove. We have appended to it a series of case histories, the selection of which could not unfortunately be determined on purely scientific grounds. Our experience is derived from private practice in an educated and literate social class, and the subject matter with which we deal often touches upon our patients’ most intimate lives and histories. It would be a grave breach of confidence to publish material of this kind, with the risk of the patients being recognized and their acquaintances becoming informed of facts which were confided only to the physician. It has therefore been impossible for us to make use of some of the most instructive and convincing of our observations. This of course applies especially to all those cases in which sexual and marital relations play an important aetiological part. Thus it comes about that we are only able to produce very incomplete evidence in favour of our view that sexuality seems to play a principal part in the pathogenesis of hysteria as a source of psychical traumas and as a motive for ‘defence’ - that is, for repressing ideas from consciousness. It is precisely observations of a markedly sexual nature that we have been obliged to leave unpublished. The case histories are followed by a number of theoretical reflections, and in a final chapter on therapeutics the technique of the ‘cathartic method’ is propounded, just as it has grown up under the hands of the neurologist. If at some points divergent and indeed contradictory opinions are expressed, this is not to be regarded as evidence of any fluctuation in our views. It arises from the natural and justifiable differences between the opinions of two observers who are agreed upon the facts and their basic reading of them, but who are not invariably at one in their interpretations and conjectures.
J. BREUER, S. FREUD
April 1895

¹ 'On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena’, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1893, Nos. 1 and 2.

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The interest which, to an ever-increasing degree, is being directed to psycho-analysis seems now to be extending to these Studies on Hysteria. The publisher desires to bring out a new edition of the book, which is at present out of print. It appears now in a reprint, without any alterations, though the opinions and methods which were put forward in the first edition have since undergone far-reaching and profound developments. So far as I personally am concerned, I have since that time had no active dealings with the subject; I have had no part in its important development and I could add nothing fresh to what was written in 1895. So I have been able to do no more than express a wish that my two contributions to the volume should be reprinted without alteration.
BREUER

As regards my share of the book, too, the only possible decision has been that the text of the first edition shall be reprinted without alteration. The developments and changes in my views during the course of thirteen years of work have been too far-reaching for it to be possible to attach them to my earlier exposition without entirely destroying its essential character. Nor have I any reason for wishing to eliminate this evidence of my initial views. Even to-day I regard them not as errors but as valuable first approximations to knowledge which could only be fully acquired after long and continuous efforts. The attentive reader will be able to detect in the present book the germs of all that has since been added to the theory of catharsis: for instance, the part played by psychosexual factors and infantilism, the importance of dreams and of unconscious symbolism. And I can give no better advice to any one interested in the development of catharsis into psycho-analysis than to begin with Studies on Hysteria and thus follow the path which I myself have trodden.
FREUD

VIENNA, July 1908