JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 429

Hidden in plain but complex view of this title page for the Neurologisches Centralblatt is  an early and important work by Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, “Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phaenomen”.  Its a paper that establishes a Freudian dictum–based in the well-boiled ideas and work of Charcot–stating that it is not  mental trauma that leads to the cause of hysterical symptoms, but the memory of it. “Hysterical patients suffer mainly from reminiscences.” Ernst Jones explains:  “The trauma is not an evoking or precipitating factor, but rather, in its memory trace…resembles a foreign body that continues to irritate the mind”.

Honestly I don’t know why people think about Freud.

If for no other reason, this paper was important as it lead to a much more significant paper in Freud’s development of himself, Studien ueber Hysteria (1895). 

The attraction for me was the complex presentation of the contents of this monthly journal–there’s a lot of data presented, it is not terribly reader-friendly, but it is still, well, pretty.  To me, its art.  Freud just  kinda mucks it up.