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Breuer and
Freud:
Doctor Josef Breuer (1842-1925) Viennese Physician
He found a vital clue in order to extend
the use of hypnosis into a more valuable and wider field. He found that
one of his patients "Anna O" spoke of her issues when under hypnosis in
an emotional manner. When she returned to a fully conscious state
her symptoms were gone. For
example, on recalling her disgust at seeing a dog drink from
a lady companion's glass of water a year before, she was
suddenly able to drink once more, having for some time been
able to quench her thirst
only by eating fruit such as melons.
Breuer reported,
Anna fell prey, during her father's final illness and in the
months after his death, to the most appalling symptoms of
hysterical paralysis and anesthesia in three out of her four
limbs, together
with a succession of other distressing psychiatric symptoms.
At different times these included weakness, inability to turn
her head, diplopia, a nervous cough, loss of appetite, hallucinations,
agitation, mood swings, abusive and destructive behaviour, amnesia,
somnolence, tunnel vision and partial aphasia.
His young friend
Sigmund Freud
continued to work with Breuer and
studied these effects. Freud, attracted to the research by Breuer, had
already been a student of hypnosis at both the Nancy and Salpetriere
schools. According to Billa Zanuso, author of The Young Frued, he
disagreed with Charcot in two important areas.
First, Freud
discarded the theory about hypnosis being useful only for hysterics.
Second, he did not believe that deep levels of hypnosis were necessary
for change; but, rather, suggestions could be accepted and past events
recalled even in a light state of hypnosis.
Their paper, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena
(1893, tr. 1909), more fully developed in Studien über Hysterie
(1895), marked the beginnings of psychoanalysis in the discovery that
the symptoms of hysterical patients—directly traceable to psychic trauma
in earlier life—represent undischarged emotional energy.
The therapy,
called the cathartic method, consisted of having the patient recall and
reproduce the forgotten scenes while under hypnosis.
The work was poorly
received by the medical profession, and the two men soon separated over
Freud's growing conviction that the undefined energy causing conversion
was sexual in nature.
Unfortunately,
Freud admitted that he wearied quickly of the "monotony of the sleep
suggestions." When working with one patient, Freud was unable to produce
a hypnotic trance, and had almost reached the point of despair when - in
desperation - he hit on the idea of trying free association in the
waking state. The case proved to be successful, and Freud apparently
welcomed the opportunity to drop hypnosis from his methods, creating and
publicizing the technique of psychoanalysis. The then taught that
psychoanalysis was now "the executor of the estate left by hypnotism."
According to
James Russell, PhD, author of Psychosemantic Parenthetics (and
researcher of hypnosis), Freud still used forms of hypnosis even after
he supposedly abandoned its use.
My personal opinion is that Freud enjoyed his
addiction to cocaine and later developed cancer in the jaw that made it
difficult for him to be effective as a hypnotist. According to my
research Freud had made it a happen to take on partners to use their
knowledge and then leave them after they did not serve his purpose
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