The St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences held its first “Bookmarks” event of the semester featuring Professor Gabriel Brownstein and his newly published book, “The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud’s Talking Cure” on Oct. 1 in the University Writing Center, located in St. Augustine Hall.
The “Bookmarks” series presents “opportunities for people in our community to gather to celebrate our achievements as writers.” The event was open to administrators. faculty, students and staff.
Brownstein explained that Pappenheim was a prominent German feminist during the early 20th century and also the origin patient of what “would become psychoanalysis.” The book tells Pappenheim’s story, from her story to its effect on modern psychology today.
“If you told me ten years ago that I would have written this book, I would have been shocked,” Brownstein said, who started off reading the beginning of the text to the audience.
He described a scene with his father in his old age, who had undergone a series of health problems and introduced Brownstein to Pappenheim.
“I began this book as a way of getting in touch with my dad,” he said. “It took me on this very complicated trip into the history of psychotherapy, psychiatry and our notion of the mind and body.”
“The question is, who is this woman and what is this disease?”
Brownstein explained that she essentially came up with the “talking cure,” which she also called “chimney sweeping;” the notion of talking as a means of therapy.
The book eventually becomes a connection between Pappenheim’s character, the larger concept of neurology and the evolution of the understanding of hysteria, which is now commonly known as conversion disorder.
“The thing that happened that was bad in medicine, in my view, was when a British neurologist, Eliot Slater, said that hysteria does not exist and that it’s not a real disease,” Brownstein said.
The book also became a journalistic endeavor, in which Brownstein met doctors and patients around the country and included their stories in the book.
He met a construction worker during his research, whose story didn’t get into the book, who had a sprained ankle before getting a complete body collapse. “There’s some relation between that injury and his paralysis.”
He explained some of Pappenheim’s own symptoms, like cheek pain, a factor that can lead to various diagnoses.
“There’s [also] some relation, potentially, between the pain in her face and the onset of her illness,” in which she was diagnosed with hysteria in 1880, but according to Brownstein, cannot be completely proven today.
Toward the end of the talk, Brownstein left time for questions and comments from the audience.
When asked about mass hysteria during the Salem Witch Trials, Brownstein explained a counter-narrative to the event.
“There’s speculation that the Salem Witch Trials were really because of a fungus that grew on the corn, which made them all hallucinate,” Brownstein said.
Senior English major Kelly Mooney spoke to The Torch about the interesting new ideas in the “Bookmarks” series.
“You get to learn a lot about different types of literature and different genres that you may have never explored, like psychoanalysis for example and the narratives behind it [when attending events like this]. It provides a great opportunity for people to learn about something new.”
“I’m excited for more bookmark series,” English student Annie Yan said. “When you have English classes or classes in general, you don’t get to interact with the professors outside of a classroom setting.”
“The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud’s Talking Cure” can be purchased at several stores and sites, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
