THE SECRET MIND OF BERTHA PAPPENHEIM

Revisiting the life of one of Freud's first patients—known as Anna O—to rethink the condition once known as hysteria.

"The night before he died, my father, Dr. Shale Brownstein, a retired psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, gave me an essay he had written about Bertha Pappenheim and Sigmund Freud and Freud’s mentor, the great Viennese physician Dr. Josef Breuer." Brownstein begins with strong memoir material, vividly recalling his fascinating father, whose interest in Pappenheim the younger Brownstein adopted as a personal project that sustained him through "the worst years of [his] life," including his wife's death and the pandemic. From there, the author dives into an exploration of Pappenheim's life, which began with "hysterical" illness but ended with her work as “a writer, activist, and organizer, and the leading Jewish crusader against the Mädchenhandel, the ‘girl business,’ the sex trade in young women.” The treatment that Pappenheim co-created with Breuer and Freud gave rise to "a new kind of talking cure, a new kind of listening cure, practiced by doctors whose primary field of study is the neuroanatomy of the brain." Today, these conditions are known as functional neurological disorders (FNDs), encompassing often-disastrous physical symptoms that cannot be traced to a clear biological cause and for which modern versions of the talking/listening cure are now dominant. Brownstein interviewed numerous FND patients and doctors, presenting Sacksian case histories, including one involving Oliver Sacks himself. Other strands trace the lives and work of Breuer and Freud. While this well-researched book bears some similarities to the author's previous work, The Open Heart Club, in this case his personal connection to the topic is less direct, so we get a bit less of his wonderful personal writing and lower stakes overall.

For those who have a connection to the condition it explores, this thoughtful book will be most welcome.