Anna O. is the pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim, a woman in the late 1800’s with “hysteria”. She was a patient of Breuer, and this was during the same time Freud was figuring out the root causes of “hysteria” in women (csa).
What they used to call Hysteriaseems to be what we now call C-PTSD.
Omg, what she went through! She seems to be often uncredited for inventing what she called “the talking cure” which Freud decided to call psychoanalysis. (STOLEN, just as we would expect from patriarchal men of science!)
However, Breuer unceremoniously dumped her as a patient, and she was hospitalized/“ill” for several years probably for a breakdown (obviously we know now that a C-PTSD patient is going to suffer major symptoms after being dumped by their therapist like that!)
And then Judith Herman writes a sentence in the book that I think will profoundly stick with me until my dying days:
“And then she recovered.”
Boom. And then she recovered. KA-Bam. I’m sure it didn’t just happen with the snap of her fingers. She worked at it, worked hard, like we all do. But she did it. She recovered.
She became a rock star of the womens liberation movement!!
“Her dedication, energy, and commitment were legendary.”
Her colleague said “A volcano lived in this woman.”
A VOLCANO!!! Wowza. Beyond impressive. I have a new hero. A real hero! Bertha.
“Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.”
She was brilliant and passionate.
I feel like an 8 year old- I wanna be like herrrrrrr.
I recognize my own intellectual limitations. But damn, I think there is a volcano in me! I don’t have what it takes to open an orphanage for girls, or invent something genius like “the talking cure” that’s never been done before. But if I can bring awareness to say, the Me Too Movement one day. Or something like that, something that brings awareness to the world, or awareness on even a much smaller level of the human atrocities that happen inside homes, maybe that’s my purpose.
I would’ve been something else career-wise in this world, if I didn’t suffer the abuse. I am barely functioning lots of the time. But my spark is in there somewhere.
Ahhhh, could my spark can really be a volcano? Yay. I hope so.
Idk, thanks for letting me ramble (again) isurvive while I’m having a moment of HOPE.
Progress
