Josef Breuer, biography of a pioneer of psychoanalysis

Josef Breuer was an Austrian physician and physiologist. who also served as a mentor to Sigmund Freud for many years and contributed to the development of conversation therapy. He is considered the founder of psychoanalysis.

He was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1842, into a wealthy Jewish family.. His mother died when he was four years old and, as a result, he was raised by his grandmother and his father. His father taught Breuer until he entered school at age 8.

After leaving school, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna and obtained his medical degree in 1867. Breuer worked in medical research, focusing his work on the regulation of the heart, the physiology of breathing and the function of the inner ear.

He married Matilda Altmann in 1868, becoming the father of five children. He and his family remained in Vienna until his death in 1925.

Most of Breuer’s children and grandchildren left Austria during the Nazi persecution. However, her daughter Dora died by suicide rather than being deported by the Nazis and her granddaughter Hanna was murdered by the Nazis.

Professional life of Josef Breuer

In 1871, Breuer became a practicing physician. He worked as a family doctor and provided medical care to many university professors and members of high society in Vienna.

He saw a variety of patients in his family practice, including, in 1880, the famous Anna O. The case of Anna O was described by Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer in the book Studies on hysteria.

Breuer’s fields of interest included philosophy, politics and theology. In addition, he maintained an active correspondence with artists, writers, philosophers, psychologists, and other scholars on a variety of topics, including art, literature, and music.

Breuer and his contribution to psychology

Between 1880 and 1882, Breuer treated a patient in his medical practice. This patient, in her later writings, received the now famous pseudonym Anna O.

The patient complained of a cough and other symptoms that she had when she was nervous.. Symptoms included mood swings, alterations in consciousness, blindness, partial paralysis and the inability to speak.

In Breuer’s time, an inexplicable constellation of symptoms like these was often called hysteria. The case of Anna O. was described by Freud himself as the trigger for the emergence of psychoanalysis.

To diagnose and treat Anna O., Breuer conducted extensive interviews with the patient. Inquiring about your symptoms, when they were likely to appear, and what sometimes led to them subsiding.

When interviewing Anna O., Breuer noted that his symptoms often decreased if he could remember and talk about the time when they appeared and tell you about your emotional responses to your symptoms.

Based on this observation, Breuer developed a procedure through which Anna O. would gradually remember the onset of her symptoms in reverse chronological order.

The cathartic method and its collaboration with Freud

The symptoms he experienced seemed to improve when he was able to share a detailed account of the first time he experienced the symptom. Anna O.’s recall of her symptoms in treatment was often facilitated through hypnosis.

Breuer named the successful treatment he used on Anna O. the ‘cathartic method.’ Based on this case, concluded that anxiety and depression were often the result of unconscious processes. He postulated that successful treatment of him would require that he be brought to consciousness.

In 1882, Breuer discussed the case of Anna O. with Sigmund Freud, who was intrigued by the method. Freud began using it with the patients he treated in his practice.

Breuer and Freud collaborated to publish a preliminary report on the cathartic method: On the psychic mechanisms of hysterical phenomena. Two years later, Breuer and Freud collaborated on the book Studies on hysteriawhich would become the basis of the practice of psychoanalysis.

Anna O

Criticism and controversy of Breuer’s work

Breuer’s cathartic method is considered the foundation of psychoanalysis and psychology. However, the doctor never provided psychological care again after treating Anna O.

Psychologists and historians, including Freud, have provided different accounts and debated their reasons for discontinuing the provision of psychological care. Some claim that Anna O. expressed feelings of sexual attraction toward Breuer, which made him uncomfortable and reluctant to practice psychoanalysis.

However, this position has not been sustained in historical research. It is thought that Breuer likely abandoned the practice of psychoanalysis due to his disagreements with Freud. on the reconstruction of memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Freud believed that memories of childhood sexual abuse recovered by people in therapy were memories of actual events. On the contrary, Breuer believed that these memories were inspired by childhood fantasies.

Although not all details about Breuer and Freud’s relationship are known, it is clear that, by 1895, disagreements between the two doctors led to the end of their working relationship. In 1896, they separated and never spoke again.

Beyond his disagreements with Freud, Breuer maintained a prolific career in medicine.. He died on June 20, 1925, in Vienna. Breuer’s life is the fictional basis of Irvin Yalom’s best-selling novel, titled The day Nietzsche cried.

He was elected a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 1894 after the nomination of three of its most prominent members: the physicist Ernst Mach and the physiologists Ewald Hering and Sigmund Exner. In 1894, He was appointed Corresponding Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

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