In the Junk Shop & Other Stories

Anna O [Bertha Pappenheim] (1859-1936), a friend of Freud's wife in Vienna, is regarded as the first patient of psychoanalysis. It was she who invented the concept of the talking cure under the care of Josef Breuer in Vienna, where she was being treated for hysteria, anorexia, paralysis, hallucinations, phantom pregnancy, suicidal thoughts and morphine addiction. Breuer published her case history Frauleine Anna O. in 1895, and it is considered the first significant document in the history of psychoanalysis. It is the first case of psychoanalytic literature, introducing Breuer and Freud's Studies on Hysteria. In 1888 Bertha Pappenheim published (anonymously) her first book of five fairy tales, Little Stories for Children. These tales have never been translated before, nor have they appeared in German since their original publication. They reflect on Pappenheim's treatment, dealing with guilt, evil and death. They are not just for children, but also serve as parables for adult visions. They allowed Pappenheim to be reborn, transformed, serving as a kind of writing cure. In 1890 she published another collection of fairy tales, In the Junk Shop. In these nine tales, nine domestic objects tell their tales of woe and misery to each other, as if they were engaged in a nocturnal therapy session. After Bertha Pappenheim was cured in Vienna, she became a successful social worker, leader of the German-Jewish Women's movement in Frankfurt, an ardent feminist and translator of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Breuer's treatment of Anna O inspired Freud to write that on this day (18 November 1882) I first became aware of the power of the unconscious.