The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim

"In 1880 in Vienna, young Bertha Pappenheim lost her ability to control her voice and body and was treated by Sigmund Freud's mentor, Josef Breuer, who diagnosed her with "hysteria." Pappenheim and Breuer developed what she called "the talking cure"-talking out memories so that symptoms go away-which became the basis for psychoanalysis. Brownstein describes Pappenheim as a brilliant feminist thinker, a crusader against human trafficking, and a pioneer in her own right. He also tells a parallel story about patients today who suffer symptoms very much like Pappenheim's, and about the doctors who are trying to cure them-the story of the neuroscience of a condition now called functional neurological disorder"--