Chapter 3, Frau Anna G., Section 5 Summary

At this point, Freud begins relating Anna's troubles to his theory of the death instinct. He thinks of the paradoxes in Anna's life, when she stops herself from things that would make her happy. For instance, she wants children but refuses to have one, because she thinks bad things would happen. He finds her compulsion to constantly relive the hotel fire and storm strange, but decides her hysteria causes an exaggeration of the normal human conflict between life instinct (libido) and death. For examples of this conflict, he cites children's tendencies to build things then destroy them, and Goethe's struggles with being weary of life. Freud continues to struggle in the root of Anna's hysteria. He is puzzled that her pains and hallucinations occurred during a time in her life when she was happy and...