Freud and Joseph Breuer made a good team -- as short-lived as it turned out to be.
Breuer was the older and in some ways the wiser of the two. He was more conservative and cautious with his 'causal interpretations and generalizations'. He was the more 'grounded' of the two. He was the better 'rational-empiricist' in that he was not quite so quick to jump to fast fast conclusions and over-generalizations.
In contrast, Freud was younger and more ambitious. Freud was quicker to jump to new -- and more provocative, controversial, dramatic -- conclusions. Freud was the better 'marketer' and 'seller'. It's just you had to pay a little closer attention to what Freud was marketing and selling because Freud was quicker to 'jump off the deep end' with his conclusions. When this happened, Freud needed someone to 'reel him back to earth again'. Breuer was that man. Unfortunately, Freud was stubborn and would not take 'no' for an answer. It was his way or the highway. So Breuer took the highway leaving Freud to fend for himself and to deal with whatever provocative, controversial issues he got himself into. They were frequent -- and many.
However, Freud was charismatic and always seemed to attract -- and then lose -- male followers. This would be one of the main 'serial, transference patterns' in Freud's life. Freud would attract all these male 'followers', 'co-workers', and/or students. He would teach them his 'Psychoanalytic system'. Then he would 'spit them out' (or they would 'spit him out') when they 'refused to buy completely into the Psychoanalytic program'.
With Freud, there was not too much room for 'variations on a theme' unless these variations came from the mouth of Freud. Between about 1906 and 1926, a whole host of very brilliant pschologists had passed through Freud's very 'tight Vienna circle', made their impression, rebelled against Freud's very 'tight reign over Freudian theory' -- and either quickly or slowly left. We can included amongst this group: Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, and Otto Rank. (And that is a select list.)
All of this is to say that Psychoanalysis could have offered a much, much richer playing field for understanding human behavior and human neurosis and/or psychopathology. But time and time again, smart men with very smart ideas were turned away by Freud -- to the ongoing and ultimate detriment of Psychoanalysis in terms of its very 'anal-retentive' development which can be viewed as a projection of Freud's very anal-retentive -- and largely 'unemotional' -- character.
Breuer was the first smart man to fall by the way side. He would be far from the last.
Between about 1893 and 1895 Freud and Breuer came up with a 'whole host of partial and interconnected sub-theories' on the various 'causes' and/or 'co-factors' of hysteria which they put together into a more or less integrative theory of hysteria.
Having said this, it could be argued that Breuer's strength was primarily as a scientist and as a doctor -- and his contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a more or less 'physio-genic' theory of hysteria that went nowhere. In contrast, Freud's contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a psychological one, and a 'theory of resistance or defense' -- that went everywhere. So maybe Breuer had reached the limit of his capabilities even though his greatest contribution to Psychoanalysis was his treatment of 'Anna O' which Freud freely acknowledged as the birthpoint of Psychoanalysis.
Off the top of my head, I will itemize most of the Freudian 'hysterical co-factors' -- and then check them later.
1. Shock: A shocking experience that rattles the personality.
2. Unconscious/Repressed Memory or Memories: The memory of the shocking experience doesn't go through the usual 'conscious memory channel'. Rather it is denied entry into the personality and enters an 'unconscious or repressed memory channel' which is totally different than the usual conscious memory channel.
3. Hysterical Conversion: From its vantage point in the unconcious memory channel, the memory is able to 'cause havoc' in the personality and in the body. 'Repressed emotional energy' gets converted into 'bodily symptoms' that often have an associative and/or symbolic connection with the original shocking experience.
4. There may be something in the 'hysterical personality' that may be 'hyper-sensitive' and prone to 'hysterical conversion pathway'.
5. Unlock the repressed memory -- complete with all emotions locked up with the memory -- and you unlock the hysterical symptom, and 'set the client free' of the particular symptom associated with the particular memory.
6. I am speculating here but I imagine that one of the main problems that a therapist like Breuer or Freud might have had with a hysterical patient is that as fast as you help 'cure' the patient of one symptom, the patient might well 'create one or more new ones'. In doing so, she has the creative capability of keeping you busuy as a therapist for either the rest of her life or the rest of yours.
Here is where the full 'transference relationship' can be seen and diagnosed. It was often the case that these young hysterical women were also 'home nurses' who treated their acutely and chronically sick fathers who, in this regard, were monopolizing all of their time and energy.
How could these women 'break free' of their fathers' constant needs in order to fulfill some of their own 'freedom' and 'womanly' needs? Presto. On a subconscious or unconscious level the women learn how to behave like their fathers were -- i.e., the hysterical young women, in effect, 'identify with their sick fathers'.
Now from a position of previous 'powerlessness', they are 'transferred' into a position of 'power' -- just like their sick father. This is the power of the sick.
The young women go to a doctor with very 'mystifying' symptoms. The doctor is 'stumped' and can't help them. They go to another doctor -- a 'neurological' and/or 'psychological' specialist.
The 'hysterical daughter of a sick father' -- quickly becomes subconsciously very creative in keeping the new doctor 'very busy' just like her father has very creatively kept his daughter busy for the last x number of years.
What goes around comes around. I call this 'transference-reversal'. From an 'underdog' position as 'nurse', the daughter quickly learns the 'power-advantage' of playing the role of 'hysterical patient' -- she gets to control the young doctor just as her sick father controls her. It's more 'fun' 'being in control', 'being in power' and controlling the young doctor.
At least until or unless the young doctor is finally smart enough to figure out what is going on. That is where the therapy really starts. It starts with understanding the full dynamics of the transference complex and the corresponding nature of the therapeutic transference relationship. In 1895, Freud hadn't quite gotten there yet. And I'm not sure he ever fully did.
Transference is not always about 'sex' and/or 'love'. Even more often, it is about 'power' and 'self-esteem' and 'aiming to undo or repair a narcissistic self-esteem injury'. Often, all the factors listed above -- and more (anxiety, guilt, anger, rage, jealousy, possessiveness, hate, revenge...) are 'mixed together' into a whole smorgasboard of different and conflicting emotions and impulses and restraints that make up the entire 'transference package or complex'.
Call this my 'Nietzschean-Adlerian-Jungian' influence when I say this. Freud had part of the transference picture figured out -- more so than anyone else at the time -- but he did not have all of it figured out. Not in 1895. Not when he was treating 'Dora' from 1900-1901. And not when he came to associate transference with 'the repetition compulsion' and 'the death instinct' late in his career.
Freud was constantly hampered in his theorizing about transference by the 'tight constraints of his own very anal-retentive theorizing about Psychoanalysis in general'. Probaby the theorist who could have helped him the most in his understanding of transference -- Alfred Adler with his theories of 'inferiority feeling', 'superiority striving', and 'compensation' -- was not around long enough and/or respected enough for his deviation off the 'main Psychoanalytic path' to have any significant and long-lasting impact on Freud's understanding of transference.
For the briefest moment in history -- specifically, Nov. 7th, 1906, in the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society -- Freud and Adler seemed fully on the same page together:
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From 'The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society Meetings', Nov. 7th, 1906...
Freud first turns against Hitschmann and his 'rationalistic' point of view.
He (Freud) attributes great importance to Adler's work; it has brought his own work a step further. To judge from the immediate impression, much of what Adler said may be correct. (Notes by the editors, Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn: It seems that Freud had in mind what was later characterized as overcompensation or counterbalance for a narcissisitic 'injury' although he uses 'anatomical' language here.)
He singled out two leading ideas as significant and fertile: (1) the concept of compensation, according to which an organic inferiority (later to include the idea of 'psychic inferiority') is counterbalanced by a supervalent cerebral activity, and (2) that the repression is accomplished by the formation of a psychic superstructure. A similar formulation had occurred to him. (Notes by the editors, Nunberg and Federn: This may refer to the formulation that repression is accomplished by the ego.)
Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Volume 1: 1906-1908, Edited by Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, New York, International Universities Press, Inc., 1962.
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But this was only a fleeting moment in time -- and the rest is history -- Adler ultimately, like so many others, separating from Freud and developing his own school of psychology -- Adlerian or Individual Psychology.
DGB Philosophy-Psychology goes back to re-integrate some of the separated pieces.
In the case of 'Anna O', one of the distinctions that DGB Psychology wants to make is between a simple case of 'Traumacy Neurosis' -- say, in the form of an 'emotional-to-physical hysterical conversion' symptom (such as Anna O 'refusing to drink) -- and a full-blown 'Father-Complex Transference Neurosis' (such as between Anna O and Joseph Breuer or between Freud and Dora).
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From the internet...see Freud, Anna O, and her 'not drinking water'...
Cathartic Method
Psychoanalysis: Cathartic Method
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The so-called "cathartic method" was a treatment for psychiatric disorders developed during 1881-1882 by Joseph Breuer with his patient "Anna O." The aim was to enable the hypnotized patient to recollect the traumatic event at the root of a particular symptom and thereby eliminate the associated pathogenic memory through "catharsis." The term was derived from Aristotle's use of it to describe the emotionally purgative effect of Greek tragedies.
Reading the case history of Anna O., one sees that the method developed gradually. At first, Breuer limited himself to making use of the patient's self-induced hypnotic states in which she would strive to express what she preferred to avoid talking about when normally conscious. Later on, Anna O. began inventing stories around a word or words she heard, at the conclusion of which she awakened serene and improved. After the death of her father, such stories evoked diurnal fears and hallucinations. The cathartic effect, linked to the emotional state that accompanied these fears, required the doctor to listen without actively seeking etiological clues. Anna O. aptly described this procedure, speaking seriously, as a "talking cure", while she referred to it jokingly as "chimney-sweeping" (1895d, p. 30). At this juncture Breuer began to more systematically employ a technique by which, while Anna O. was in a trance, he repeated to her a few words that she herself had muttered while in a self-induced "absence."
It was probably in August 1881 that the method acquired its definitive form. This was when Anna O., after refusing to drink water and suffering near-hydrophobia during hot weather, remembered the disgust she felt when she happened upon her English lady-companion's dog while it was drinking from a water glass. As soon as she described the event, she asked for water and "thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to return" (p. 35) Other examples provided Breuer with evidence that "in the case of this patient the hysterical phenomena disappeared as soon as the event which had give rise to them was reproduced in her hypnosis" (p. 35), and that systematic application of what she called "chimney sweeping" would put an end to one after another of such morbid phenomena. To move the treatment along faster, Breuer began use hypnosis, which he had not regularly employed previously.
Freud and Breuer filled out the notion of catharsis with the concept of "abreaction"—a quantity of affect that was linked to memory of a traumatic and pathogenic event that could not be evacuated through normal physical and organic processes as required by the "principle of constancy" and so, thus blocked (eingeklemmt), was redirected through somatic channels to become the process at the origin of the pathological symptoms (1893a).
Tired of poor results and of the monotony of hypnotic suggestion, by 1889 Freud appears to have decided, in treating Emmy von N., to employ "the cathartic method of J. Breuer." But failure to regularly induce hypnotic states inclined him by 1892 to give up hypnosis, which his patient Elisabeth von R. disliked. He asked her to lay down and close her eyes but allowed her to move about or open her eyes as she wished, and he experimented with a "pressure technique": "I placed my hand on the patient's forehead or took her head between my hands and said: 'You will think of it [a symptom or its origin] under the pressure of my hand. At the moment at which I relax my pressure you will see something in front of you or something will come into your head. Catch hold of it. It will be what we are looking for.—Well, what have you seen or what has occurred to you?" (Freud 1895d, p. 110). This procedure "has scarcely ever left me in the lurch since then," (p. 111) Freud added, claiming that this was the case to such an extent that he told patients that it could not possibly fail but invariably enabled him to "at last [extract] the information" (p. 111).
Breuer's method little by little thus became an "analysis of the psyche" which prefigured "psychoanalysis," a term that first appeared in print in 1896. The technique would be developed progressively over the course of a dozen years.By 1907, when Freud undertook analysis of the "Rat Man," he no longer actively demanded that patients produce material, but asked only that they verbalize what spontaneously came to mind.
Freud's thesis, according to which trauma at the root of displaced energy towards the soma is invariably sexual in nature, led to a rupture in his relationship with Breuer, but it also determined the future course of psychoanalysis. His explanation of the difficulties that patients experienced during treatment to defend themselves against pathogenic memories would come to be known as "resistance," while the concept of "transference" would emerge from his understanding of Breuer's sudden termination of Anna O., or the time that a patient, upon waking from hypnosis, threw her arms around his neck.
Catharsis and abreaction, even while still observed during psychoanalytic treatment, no longer constitute therapeutic aims as in 1895. However, they remain prominent in several psychotherapeutic techniques, such as in "Primal Scream" therapy and certain types of psychodrama.
Bibliography
Anderson, Ola. (1962). Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis. Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget.
Chertok Léon; and Saussure, Raymond de. (1973). Naissance du psychanalyste. Paris: Payot.
Freud, Sigmund. (1893a). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: Preliminary communication. SE,2.
——. (1895d). Studies on Hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.
Mijolla Alain de. (1982). Aux origines de la pratique psychanalytique. In R. Jaccart (Ed.), Histoire de la psychanalyse. Paris: Hachette.
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DGB Psychology does not let Freud totally off the hook for abandoning his infamous 'Seduction Theory'. In doing so, Freud put 'the theoretical and therapeutic lid back on child sexual abuse' or 'swept it under the carpet' if you will. However, at the same time, DGB Psychology does not let Freud off the hook for his totally focusing on 'The Seduction Theory' to begin with. Nowhere have I read in the case of 'Anna O' that she was sexually abused by her father. Nor does Anna O's 'refusing to drink water' because 'a dog drank water out of a human glass' constitute anything close to 'The Seduction Theory' in my mind (unless the dog seduced Anna O). Freud had an unfortuante habit of overgeneralizing his theoretical conclusions -- and then 'grandstanding' these conclusions until they collapsed under the weight of his own overgeneralizing. 'One or two robins does not necessarily mean spring.' Any man of Freud's scientific background and training should know that. Sometimes a person's need to 'make scientific or social or political waves' can interfere with, and push into the back seat, the same person's need to 'stay grounded in good, logical, rational-empirical common sense'. Narcissistic bias can easily interfere with scientific, epistemological -- and Psychoanalytic -- evolution.
DGB Psychology mixes and matches elements of Freud's Traumacy, Seduction, Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal, and Life-Death Instinct Theory with elements from other theorists such as Bacon, Nietzsche, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Berne, Perls, and Masson.
More on this to come.
-- dgb, Feb. 21st-23rd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
