French Feminist Cathy Bernheim Investigates a Hypnotic Ancestor

Image by wiki commons
An interest in family roots can appear without warning. A new biography, “Hippolyte Bernheim: a Destiny Under Hypnosis” (“Hippolyte Bernheim, un destin sous hypnose”), appeared in March from Les éditions Hugo & Cie, recounting the life of a French Jewish neurologist and pioneer of hypnotic therapy.
Its author is French novelist and essayist Cathy Bernheim, the subject’s great-grand-niece. Bernheim herself, born in 1946, admits surprise at recently feeling fascination for her Jewish ancestors, especially male ones, as her previously published works express little, if any, affection for men in general. In 2003, Les éditions du félin published Bernheim’s 1991 treatise “Almost-Perfect Love” (“L’amour presque parfait”), slating the lack of “truth or equality” in male-female relationships, and concluding:
The only way I would have been able to put up with loving men was if I were one myself.
In 1970, as expression of her feminist ethos, Cathy Bernheim joined a group who placed a wreath at Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, dedicated to the “unknown wife of the unknown soldier.” Forty years on, in August 2010, Bernheim and fellow Parisian feminists commemorated that gesture, which she had already described in a 1983 history of French feminism from Les editions du Seuil, “Disruption, My Sister: Birth of a Women’s Movement,” 1970-1972 (“Perturbation, ma soeur: Naissance d’un mouvement de femmes, 1970-1972”), reprinted in September 2010 by Les éditions du félin. So this homage to a male forebear represents an unexpected new step for Bernheim.
Great-grand-uncle Hippolyte, born in Alsace in 1840, fully deserves this new-found affection, as his 19th century work in hypnotism drew distinguished medical visitors to his hospital in Nancy, France, including such eminent German-speaking Jewish doctors as Albert Moll and, in 1889, Sigmund Freud himself. Cathy Bernheim even quotes the French Jewish psychiatrist Serge Leclaire to the effect that Freud’s later discoveries were “already implicit in his meeting with Bernheim.”
Yet Freud, then in his early 30s, arrived merely hoping that Bernheim would help him to cure a patient. Freud brought along Anna von Lieben, whom he later described as a “hysteric of great distinction” under the pseudonym Frau Cäcilie in his landmark “Studies in Hysteria.” But Bernheim, author of several books on the subject was unable to hypnotize Frau Cäcilie.
This, however, did not lessen the cordiality of the doctors’ meeting (Freud later translated Bernheim’s books into German). Bernheim wrote to a fellow doctor, describing Freud as a “charming boy” (un charmant garçon). Clearly, even a radical feminist would delight in such a brilliantly convivial male antecedent.
Watch a French TV tribute to Hippolyte Bernheim from 1980.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.