Breuer Josef is an Australian physician and physiologist, whom Sigmund Freud and others called the founder of psychoanalysis. He managed to cure the patient of the symptoms of hysteria after he helped her to remember unpleasant moments from the past under hypnosis. He spoke about his method and the results obtained to Sigmund Freud, and also gave him his patients.
Josef Breuer: biography
Born on 1842-15-01 in Vienna and died there on 1925-20-06. Joseph's father Leopold (1791-1872) was a teacher of religion employed by the Viennese Jewish community. Breuer described him as belonging to "that generation of Eastern European Jews who first emerged from the intellectual ghetto into the air of the Western world."
Mother died when he was about four years old, and Breuer Josef spent the early years of his life with his grandmother. His father taught him until eight, and then he entered the Academic Gymnasium of Vienna, from which he graduated in 1858. The following year, after completing a general university education, Josef Breuer entered the medicalSchool of the University of Vienna and completed his medical studies in 1867. In the same year, immediately after passing the exam, he became an assistant to the therapist Johann Oppolzer. When he died in 1871, Breuer started his own private practice.
The best doctor in Vienna
In 1875, Breuer became Privatdozent of Therapy. He resigned from this position on July 7, 1885, as he was denied access to patients for teaching purposes. He also refused to allow the surgeon Billroth to nominate him for an associate professorship. His formal relationship with the medical faculty was thus strained.
At the same time, Breuer was recognized as one of the best doctors and scientists in Vienna. Work became his main interest, and although he once called himself a "general practitioner", he was what is now called a general practitioner. Some indication of Breuer's reputation may be given by the fact that among his patients were many professors of the medical faculty, as well as Sigmund Freud and the Prime Minister of Hungary. In 1894 he was elected to the Vienna Academy of Sciences on the nomination of its most distinguished members: the physicist Ernst Mach and the physiologists Ewald Hering and Sigmund Exner.
Private life
May 20, 1868 Breuer Josef married Mathilde Altmann, who bore him five children: Robert, Bertha Hammerschlag, Margaret Schiff, Hans and Dora. Breuer's daughter Dora committed suicide, not wanting to be captured by the Nazis. They also killed Breuer's granddaughter Hannah Schiff. The rest of his descendants live in England,Canada and the United States.
Scientific work
Breuer Josef studied medicine in Vienna and received his degree in 1864. He studied thermoregulation and the physiology of respiration (the Hering-Breuer reflex). In 1871 he began his practice in Vienna. At the same time, he conducted studies on the function of the inner ear (Mach-Breuer's theory of the flow of endolymphatic fluid). Becoming an internist in 1874, he returned to research in 1884.
Breuer was a friend and family physician to some members of the Vienna Teachers College and the capital's high society. He maintained a correspondence with artists, writers, philosophers, psychologists and colleagues in his field, and in 1894 was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.
Well versed in philosophy, Breuer Joseph was interested in the theory of knowledge and the theoretical foundations of Darwinism, as evidenced by his participation in the 1902 conference and exchange of letters with Franz von Brentano. He was an active participant in discussions about the foundations of politics and ideology, and also discussed issues of art, literature and music.
As an assimilated and enlightened Jew, he adopted a kind of pantheism he adopted from Goethe and Gustav Theodor Fechner. His favorite aphorism was Spinoza's Suum esse conservare ("To preserve one's existence"). He was gripped by a form of skepticism and, following William Thackeray, a "demon 'but'" that forced him to question any newly acquired knowledge. Because of a detailed knowledge of the history of ideas, social history and political conditions of his era, as well as for reasons related to hisown life, he felt it was nearly impossible for him to take questionable action.
At the heart of Breuer's research in physiology was the desire to find the relationship between structure and function, and therefore to reveal the form of teleological inquiry. He was interested in regulatory processes in the form of self-control mechanisms. Unlike a number of physiologists in the so-called biophysicalist movement, inspired by Ernst Brücke, Hermann von Helmholtz and Dubois-Reymond, Breuer believed in neovitalism.
Beginnings of psychoanalysis
In 1880-1882 he treated a young patient, Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), who suffered from a nervous cough and a host of other hysterical symptoms (mood swings, changes in states of consciousness, visual disturbances, paralysis and convulsions, aphasia). During long conversations, the doctor and his ward saw that some manifestations of the disease disappeared when the memories of their first manifestation were restored, and it became possible to reproduce the affects associated with them. This happened at certain times of the day in spontaneous autohypnotic states. Based on these observations, initially by accident, the patient and physician developed a systematic procedure whereby individual symptoms were gradually recalled in reverse chronological order until they disappeared after the original scene had been fully reproduced. Sometimes artificial hypnosis was used during therapy if the patient did not enter a state of self-hypnosis.
During therapyrequired a permanent stay of Anna O. in a clinic near Vienna because of the patient's increased risk of suicide. Despite the obvious and unexpected success of the method, some manifestations of the disease remained. These included temporary forgetting of the mother tongue and severe trigeminal neuralgia, which required treatment with addictive morphine. Because of these symptoms, Breuer referred the patient for further treatment to Dr. Ludwig Binswanger at the Bellevue Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen in July 1882. She was discharged in October with improvements but not fully cured.
Joint work with Freud
In 1882, Breuer Josef discussed the above incident with his colleague Sigmund Freud, who was 14 years his junior. After the latter began working as a neuropathologist, he tested this method on his patients. Based on the theory of Charcot, Pierre Janet, Möbius, Hippolyte Bernheim and others, they jointly developed the theoretical foundations for the functioning of the mental apparatus, as well as therapeutic procedures, which they called the "method of catharsis", referring to Aristotle's ideas about the function of tragedy (catharsis as a purification of the emotions of the audience).
In 1893 they published a preliminary report "On the mental mechanisms of hysterical phenomena." It was followed two years later by Studies in Hysteria, the "cornerstone of psychoanalysis" that laid the foundations for the field of psychiatry. The work included a chapter on theory (Breuer), another on therapy (Freud), and five case histories (Anna O., Emmyvon N., Katarina, Lucy R., Elisabeth von R.).
Departure from psychoanalysis
Freud continued to develop theory and technique while working with Breuer (defensive neuroses, free association). Josef was not convinced of the need for an exclusive emphasis on sexual factors, and his colleague saw in this warning a sign of detachment. In 1895, the distance between them increased, which led to the end of their cooperation.
Continuing to show interest in the development of psychoanalytic theory, Breuer Josef rejected the cathartic method. Freud later proposed the hypothesis that Anna O.'s treatment was abruptly interrupted due to a strong erotic transference accompanied by hysterical pregnancy and childbirth. This version of events, reconstructed by Freud and disseminated by Ernest Jones, among other things, does not stand up to historical scrutiny. Later attempts to show that Anna O.'s case description was a fraud were not supported by the facts.
Versatile personality
Josef Breuer was friends with many of the brightest intellectuals of his time. He had a long correspondence with Brentano, was a close friend of the poetess Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach, and was a friend of Mach, whom he met while researching the inner ear. Breuer's opinion on literary and philosophical questions seems to have been widely respected. Breuer spoke many languages: for example, the treatment of Anna O. for a long time was conducted in English. The range and depth of his cultural interests were as unusual and important as his medical and scientific achievements.
Josef Breuer: interesting facts from life
- After his patient Anna O. developed a strong attachment to him, which was of a pronounced sexual nature, Breuer Josef transferred work in the field of psychotherapy, which required direct contact with patients, to Sigmund Freud.
- Breuer discovered that neurotic symptoms arise from subconscious processes and go away when they become conscious.
- Sigmund Freud owes his achievements in psychotherapy to Breuer, who introduced him to his discoveries and gave him his patients.
- In 1868, he described the Hering-Breuer reflex, which is involved in controlling inhalation and inhalation during normal breathing.
- In 1873, Breuer discovered the sensory function of the semicircular canals of the bony labyrinth of the inner ear and their relationship to spatial orientation and a sense of balance.
- In his will, he expressed his will to be cremated, and it was granted.
