The founder of the cathartic method of psychotherapy Breyer Josef: biography, work and interesting facts

Breyer Josef is an Australian physician and physiologist, whom Sigmund Freud and others called the ancestor of psychoanalysis. He managed to heal the patient from the symptoms of hysteria after he helped her recall unpleasant moments from the past under hypnosis. He talked about his method and the results obtained to Sigmund Freud, and also handed over his patients to him.

Josef Breyer: Biography

He was born on 15.01.1842 in Vienna and died there on 20.06.1925. Father Josef Leopold (1791-1872) was a teacher of religion, hired by the Viennese Jewish community. Breyer described him as belonging to the "generation of East European Jews who first emerged from the intellectual ghetto into the air of the Western world."

His mother died when he was about four years old, and Breyer Josef spent his early years with his grandmother. His father taught him until eight, and then he entered the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna, which he graduated in 1858. The following year, after completing the course of general university education, Josef Breyer entered the medical school of the University of Vienna and completed medical training in 1867. In the same year, immediately after passing the exam, he became assistant therapist Johann Oppolzer. When he died in 1871, Breuer began his own private practice.

The best doctor of Vienna

In 1875, Breuer became a privat-docent of therapy. He resigned from this post on July 7, 1885, because he was denied access to patients with educational goals. He also refused to allow the surgeon Bielrot to nominate him for the post of associate professor. His formal relationship with the medical faculty was, thus, tense.

At the same time, Breuer was recognized as one of the best doctors and scientists in Vienna. The work became his main interest, and although he once described himself as a "general practitioner", he was what is now called a therapist. Some idea of the reputation of Breuer can be given by the fact that among his patients there 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 recommendation of its most distinguished members: the physicist Ernst Mach and the physiologists Ewald Goering and Sigmund Exner.

Personal life

May 20, 1868 Breyer Josef married Matilde Altman, who bore him five children: Robert, Bertu Hammerschlag, Margaret Schiff, Hans and Douro. Daughter Breuer Dora committed suicide, not wanting to be caught 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

Breyer Josef studied medicine in Vienna and received his degree in 1864. He studied thermoregulation and respiratory physiology (the Göring-Breyer reflex). In 1871, he began his practice in Vienna. At the same time, he carried out studies of the function of the inner ear (Mach-Breuer theory on the flow of the endolymph fluid). Becoming a therapist in 1874, he returned to research in 1884.

Breuer was a friend and family doctor of some members of the Vienna Pedagogical College and the capital's high society. He maintained 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, Breyer Joseph was interested in the theory of knowledge and the theoretical foundations of Darwinism, which is confirmed by his participation in the 1902 conference and the 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, adopted by Goethe and Gustav Theodor Fechner. His favorite aphorism was the statement of Spinoza Suum esse conservare ("To preserve his existence"). He was seized by a form of skepticism and, following William Thackeray, "a demon" but ", which forced him to question any newly acquired knowledge. Because of the detailed knowledge of the history of ideas, social history and political conditions of his era, and also for reasons related to his own life, he believed that it was almost impossible for him to take dubious actions.

At the core of Breyer's research in the field of 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 some physiologists in the so-called movement of biophysicalists, inspired by Ernst Brücke, Hermann von Helmholtz and Dubois-Reymond, Breuer believed in neo-vitalism.

The beginning of psychoanalysis

In 1880-1882, he treated a young patient, Bert Pappenheim (Anna O.), who suffered from a nervous cough and a host of other hysterical symptoms (mood swings, changes in states of consciousness, visual impairment, paralysis and convulsions, aphasia). During long conversations, the doctor and his ward saw that some manifestations of the disease disappeared, when memories of their first manifestation were restored, and it became possible to reproduce the affects associated with them. This occurred at a certain time of day with spontaneous autohypnotic states. Based on these observations, initially randomly, the patient and the physician developed a systematic procedure, according to which individual symptoms were gradually recalled in reverse chronological order, until they disappeared after the original scene was fully reproduced. Sometimes during therapy, artificial hypnosis was used if the patient was not in a state of self-hypnosis.

During the therapy, Anna O.'s constant stay in a clinic near Vienna was required because of the increased risk of suicide of the patient. Despite the obvious and unexpected success of the method, some manifestations of the disease remained. They included temporary forgetting of the native language and the strongest trigeminal neuralgia that required treatment with addictive morphine. Because of these symptoms, Breuer sent 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 completely cured.

Working together with Freud

In 1882, Breyer Josef discussed the above case with his colleague Sigmund Freud, who was 14 years his junior. After the latter began to work as a neurologist, he tested this method on his patients. Proceeding from the theory of Charcot, Pierre Janet, Mobius, Hippolytus Bernheim and others, they jointly developed the theoretical foundations of the functioning of the mental apparatus, as well as therapeutic procedures, which they called the "catharsis method", referring to Aristotle's ideas about the function of tragedy (catharsis as a cleansing of the spectators' emotions ).

In 1893 they published a preliminary report "On the Mental Mechanisms of Hysterical Phenomena." Two years later, he was followed by "Studies of hysteria," "the cornerstone of psychoanalysis," which laid the foundation in this area of psychiatry. In the work was a chapter devoted to the theory (Breyer), another dedicated to therapy (Freud), and five case histories (Anna O., Emmy von N., Katarina, Lucy R., Elisabeth von R.).

Leaving psychoanalysis

Freud continued to develop theory and technology during a joint work with Breuer (protective neuroses, free associations). 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, Breyer Joseph rejected the cathartic method. Freud later proposed a hypothesis that the treatment of Anna O. was suddenly interrupted due to a strong erotic transference, accompanied by hysterical pregnancy and childbirth. This version of events, recreated by Freud and circulated by Ernest Jones, among other things, does not stand up to historical criticism. Later attempts to show that the description of the case of Anna O. was fraud, facts were not reinforced.

Versatile personality

Josef Breyer was friendly with many of the brightest intellectuals of his time. He maintained a long correspondence with Brentano, was a close friend of the poetess Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach, and was friends with Mach, whom he met during studies of the inner ear. Breyer's opinion on literary and philosophical issues seems to have been widely respected. Breyer 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 just as unusual and important as his medical and scientific achievements.

Josef Breyer: interesting facts from life

• After his patient Anne O. formed strong attachment to him, which had a pronounced sexual character, Breyer Josef worked in the field of psychotherapy, requiring direct contact with patients, shifted to Sigmund Freud.
• Breyer discovered that neurotic symptoms arise from subconscious processes, and go away when they become conscious.
• Sigmund Freud achievements in psychotherapy is due to Breyer, who introduced him to his discoveries and gave him his patients.
• In 1868, he described the reflex of Goering-Breuer, which is used to control inhalation and inhalation during normal breathing.
• In 1873, Breuer discovered the sensory function of the semicircular canals of the bone labyrinth of the inner ear and their relationship to orientation in space and with a sense of balance.
• In his will he expressed a desire to be cremated, and it was executed.