CASE 4: KATHARINA

GROUP MEMBERS

• Satkrit Gautam• Swechchhya Thakuri• Susmita Shrestha• Rojina Gyawali

CONTENTS

• Biography of the author• Background on the case of Katharina• Summary• Text analysis• Sigmund’s psycho-analysis on Katharina• Rhetorical strategies (style of the text)• Critical AppreciationTerminologies• Conclusion

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)• Born –May 6,1856 in

Freiberg, Moravia• Graduated from Vienna

University in 1873• Physiologist, medical

doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis

• Founder of Psychoanalytic School of Psychology

• Died of cancer while exiled in England in 1939

Cont…

• Recognised as one of the most influential and authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century

• Articulated and refined the concepts of the unconscious, of infantile sexuality, of repression, and proposed a tri-partite account of the mind's structure, all as part of a radically new conceptual and therapeutic frame of reference for the understanding of human psychological development and the treatment of abnormal mental conditions

• Freud's innovative treatment of human actions, dreams, and indeed of cultural artifacts as invariably possessing implicit symbolic significance has proven to be extraordinarily fecund, and has had massive implications for a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation in addition to psychology.

• However, Freud's most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a new science of the mind, remains the subject of much critical debate and controversy.

STUDIES IN HYSTERIA• Studies on Hysteria (German:

Studien über Hysterie) was a book published in 1895 by Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer.

• It contained a number of Breuer and Freud's case studies of "hysterics". It included one of the case “Katharina’.

• At the time of its release, Studies on Hysteria was not well received by the European medical community.

Cont….

• It was not until years later that psychoanalysis was recognized as a legitimate psychiatric tool.

• In the book were presented two different viewpoints: a neurophysiologic and a psychological cause for hysteria. Breuer described the causes of hysteria by supporting a neurophysiologic cause, while Freud used a psychological standpoint.

BACKGROUND ON KATHARINA

• "Katharina," whose real name, AureliaÖhm-Kronich, was uncovered by Peter Swales (1988), was born on January 9, 1875, in Vienna, and died on September 3, 1929, in Reichenau.

• Her case was the third discussed by Sigmund Freud in the Studies on Hysteria (1895d).

• A note added to the text in 1924 corrects the historical record with the following information: "Katharina was not the niece but the daughter of the landlady. The girl fell ill, therefore, as a result of sexual attempts on the part of her own father"

SUMMARY ON CASE 4: KATHARINA

• Dr. Freud meets Katharina during excursion in Hohe Tauren.

• Suffered from suffocation due to anxiety attack.

• During attack:– Feeling of something pressing her eyes.– Head gets heavy and feel giddy.– Throat starts to choke.– Hallucinates an awful face.

Continued…

• Freud’s view: anxiety attack with some signs of hysterical aura.

• Freud’s conclusion:– Anxiety was actually hysterical attack– Dreadful face she hallucinated was that of her

uncle– She was terrified by his threatening– Sick implies disgust

Text analysis• Katharina, niece of the landlady, meets Sigmund

Freud during excursion in Hohe Tauren.• She confesses to him.• Uncle and her cousin Franziska caught during

sexual intercourse. • Tells her Aunt about Uncles infidelity.• The forgotten memory when molested by her

Uncle floods back.

Continued…

• Molested by Uncle who was incestuous towards her in an Inn.

• Too young to know about such sexual activities.• Recalls times when she suspects she saw her

Uncle and Franziska.• The disgust was not by the sight of her Uncle and

Franziska • Memory of the attempt on her at the night she

had “felt her uncle’s body” disgusted her

Continued…

• Dr. Freud asks her about the awful face.

• She recognizes it as her Uncle’s head.

• Uncle had threatened to do something to her.

• She was scared so she frequently dreamt about the awful angry face

Contd……….• The case history of Katharina, an employee at a

mountain retreat that Freud visited, is presented.• The girl approached him with a problem of an

anxiety attack that had first appeared 2 years previously.

• Katharina realized that her uncle had been making advances to her and that he had also been involved with her cousin.

• It was hoped that she, Katharina, whose sexual sensibility had been injured at an early age, derived some benefit from the conversation with Freud.

Cont..• Katharina agreed that what Freud interpolated into

her story was probably true; but she was not in a position to recognize it as something she had experienced.

• The case was fitted into the schematic picture of an acquired hysteria.

• In every analysis of a case of hysteria based on sexual traumas, the impressions from the presexual period which produce no effect on the child attain traumatic power at a later date as memories, when the girl or married women acquires an understanding of sexual life.

Cont…

• The anxiety which Katharina suffered in her attacks was a hysterical one; that is, it was a reproduction of the anxiety which had appeared in connection with each of the sexual traumas.

Psychological Analysis

Sigmund divided personality into:• Ego- balance between Superego & ID.

• Superego- Will or desire that can be controlled.

• ID(Instinctive Drive)- Uncontrollable emotions or excitement.

CONTD…

• Compares the acquired hysteria into two phases:

• Traumatic Moment( When uncle approached her once in inn).

• Auxiliary moment (When she saw her uncle with Franziska engaging in sexual relation).

CONTD…

• Auxiliary moment is equally active as traumatic in her case.

• Auxiliary moment sometimes can work as traumatic.

• The latter scene was equally functioning rather than revival of traumatic experiences.

Rhetorical analysis• Balanced Tone• Complex Sentences• Dialogues are punctuated with Freud's thought

process, as in paragraph 19, 26, 50, etc.• 1st section diagnosis (upto paragraph 26)• Analysis by Dr. Frued, then onward• Brackets (in paragraph 25, 41,47), Dash (in

paragraph 66, 68, 70) and footnotes are provided for extra information

Conclusion

• Finds peculiarity in her case• Symptoms of hysterical phenomena does not

occur immediately but after a span of incubation

• Freud unraveled the cause of hysterical symptom

Terminologies

• Hysteria: emotionally unstable state • Molestation: act of subjecting someone to

unwanted or improper sexual advance activity.

• Incestuous: relating or involving incest.• Anxiety: nervousness or agitation.

THANK YOU!