Emma Eckstein

Emma Eckstein (Vienna, 1865–1924) was an Austrian woman who holds a singular place in the origins of psychoanalysis: a patient of Freud, his collaborator and, for a short time, a psychoanalyst herself. Her case matters because it sheds light on the tensions between Freud and his friend Wilhelm Fliess.

Born into a well-off Viennese family closely connected to Freud, she took part in the city's women's movement, writing for the magazines Dokumente der Frauen and Neues Frauenleben, and in 1904 published a book on sexual education for children. Her brothers Gustav and Friedrich and her sister Therese, who became one of the first women members of parliament, were also public figures. After an operation in 1910 she remained a partial invalid until her death in 1924.

Around the age of twenty-seven she went to Freud with stomach complaints and discomfort linked to menstruation. Freud diagnosed hysteria and suspected excessive masturbation. The analysis, one of the longest of his early cases, gave him material on repressed memories and deferred action. In 1897 he cited her findings to Fliess in support of his seduction theory, according to which neuroses stemmed from sexual abuse of children.

In February 1895 Fliess operated on her nose in Vienna, following his idea of a link between the nose and sexuality. The procedure was a disaster: haemorrhages, infections and a forgotten strip of gauze that the surgeon Ignaz Rosanes removed. Freud did not blame Fliess and later attributed the bleeding to hysterical wishes. Jeffrey Masson connected this episode to Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory, although other scholars qualify that role.