Chapter 3, Frau Anna G., Section 6 Summary

To summarize his case report, Freud relates Anna's history to the Oedipus complex. Like all young girls, Freud says, Anna wished her mother dead so she could be with her father. However, when this wish came true, everything backfired and her father became even more distant. Anna supported herself by relying on kind women, and rejected the notion that her mother had an affair and was not perfect. Freud concludes that Anna's rejecting the truth about her mother as a child manifests itself in her breathing problems, possibly reflecting difficulty breathing in a fire.

Freud writes he is not surprised that Anna had a relationship with someone like A., because Anna had already begun a pattern of destructive relationships with men. To recover, Anna went, naturally, to a woman, Madame R. When that relationship also...