Josef Breuer (/ˈbrɔɪər/ BROY-ur; Austrian German: [ˈbrɔʏɐ]; 15 January 1842 – 20 June 1925) was an Austrian physician who made discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work during the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., led to the development of the "cathartic method" (also referred to as the "talking cure") for psychiatric disorders. The method was a major initiatory factor for psychoanalysis, as developed by Breuer's friend and collaborator Sigmund Freud.
Josef Breuer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 15 January 1842 Vienna, Austrian Empire |
| Died | 20 June 1925 (aged 83) Vienna, Austria |
| Education | University of Vienna |
| School | Psychoanalysis |
Early life
Born in Vienna, his father, Leopold Breuer, taught religion in Vienna's Jewish community. Breuer's mother died when he was quite young, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and educated by his father until the age of eight. He graduated from the Akademisches Gymnasium of Vienna in 1858 and then studied at the university for one year before enrolling in the medical school of the University of Vienna. He passed his medical examinations in 1867 and went to work as assistant to the internist Johann Oppolzer at the university.
Neurophysiology
Breuer, working for Ewald Hering at the military medical school in Vienna, was the first to demonstrate the role of the vagus nerve in the reflex nature of respiration. This was different from previous physiological belief, and changed the way scientists considered the relationship of the lungs to the nervous system. The mechanism is now known as the Hering–Breuer reflex.
Independent of each other in 1873, Breuer and the physicist and mathematician Ernst Mach discovered how the sense of balance (i.e. the perception of the head's imbalance) functions: that it is managed by information the brain receives from the movement of a fluid in the semicircular canals of the inner ear. That the sense of balance depends on the three semicircular canals was discovered in 1870 by the physiologist Friedrich Goltz, but Goltz did not discover how the balance-sensing apparatus functions.
Anna O.
Breuer is known best perhaps for his work during the 1880s with Anna O. (the case pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim), a woman suffering from "paralysis of her limbs, and anaesthesias, as well as disturbances of vision and speech". Breuer observed that her symptoms reduced or ended after she described them to him. Anna O. humorously called this procedure chimney sweeping. She also invented the more serious appellation for this form of therapy, talking cure. Breuer later referred to it as the “cathartic method”.
Breuer was then a mentor to the young Sigmund Freud, and had helped establish him in medical practice. Ernest Jones recalled, "Freud was greatly interested in hearing of the case of Anna O, which ... made a deep impression on him"; and in his work of 1909, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud stated, "I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when ... Breuer, first (in 1880-2) made use of this procedure ... Never before had anyone removed a hysterical symptom by such a method."
Freud and Breuer documented their discussions of Anna O. and other case studies in their 1895 book, Studies in Hysteria. These discussions of Breuer's treatment of Anna O. became "a formative basis of psychoanalytic practice, especially the importance of fantasies (in extreme cases, hallucinations), hysteria [...], and the concept and method of catharsis which were Breuer's major contributions".Louis Breger has observed that in the Studies, "Freud is looking for a grand theory that will make him famous and, because of this, he is always fastening on what he thinks will be a single cause of hysteria, such as sexual conflict...Breuer, on the other hand, writes about the many factors that produce symptoms, including traumas of a variety of kinds. He also gives others, such as Pierre Janet, credit and argues for “eclecticism”; he is open to many different ways of understanding and treating hysteria."
The two men became increasingly estranged. From a Freudian consideration, "while Breuer, with his intelligent and amorous patient Anna O., had unwittingly laid the groundwork for psychoanalysis, it was Freud who drew the consequences from Breuer's case". However, Breger notes that Breuer, while he valued Freud's contributions, didn't agree that sexual issues were the only cause of neurotic symptoms; he wrote in a 1907 letter to a colleague that “Freud is a man given to absolute and exclusive formulations: this is a psychical need which, in my opinion, leads to excessive generalization”. Freud later became hostile to Breuer, no longer giving him credit and helping spread a rumour that Breuer had been unable to manage erotic attention from Anna O. and had abandoned her case, though research indicates this never happened and Breuer remained involved with her case for several years while she remained unwell.
In 1894 Breuer was elected a Corresponding Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.
Family
Breuer married Mathilde Altmann in 1868, and they had five children. His daughter Dora later committed suicide rather than be deported by the Nazis.[citation needed] Another one of his daughters, Margarete Schiff, perished in the ghetto of Theresienstadt on September 9, 1942.[citation needed] Breuer's granddaughter, Hanna Schiff, died while imprisoned by the Nazis.[citation needed]
Works
- Zwei Fälle von Hydrophobie. In: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 (1868). Sp. 178 f., 210-213.
- Das Verhalten der Eigenwärme in Krankheiten. In: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 (1868). Sp. 982-985, 998-1002.
- Die Selbststeuerung der Athmung durch den Nervus vagus. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 58/2 (1868), S. 909-937.
- Bemerkungen zu Senator's „Beiträge zur Lehre von der Eigenwärme und dem Fieber“. In: Arch. path. Anat., Berlin 46 (1969), S. 391 f.
- Über Bogengänge des Labyrinths. In: Allg. Wien. med. Ztg. 18 (1873), S. 598, 606.
- Über die Function der Bogengänge des Ohrlabyrinthes. In: Med. Jb., Wien 1874. S. 72-124.
- Zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne (Gleichgewichtsorgan). Vorläufige Mittheilung. In: Anz. Ges. Ärzte, Wien 1873. Nr. 9 (17. Dezember 1873), S. 31-33.
- Beiträge zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne (Gleichgewichtsorgan, Vestibularapparat des Ohrlabyrinths). Zweite Mittheilung. In: Med. Jb., Wien 1875. S. 87-156.
- Neue Versuche an den Ohrbogengängen. In: Arch. Physiol. 44 (1889), S. 135-152.
- Über die Funktion der Otolithen-Apparate. In: Arch. Physiol. 48 (1891), S. 195-306.
- Über Brommastitis. In: Wien. med. Presse 35 (1894), Sp. 1028.
- Über Bogengänge und Raumsinn. In: Arch. Physiol. 68 (1897), S. 596-648.
- Die Krisis des Darwinismus und die Teleologie. Vortrag, gehalten am 2. Mai 1902. In: Vorträge und Besprechungen. (1902), S. 43-64. Nachdruck der Ausgabe 1902: Edition discord, Tübingen 1986.
- Über Galvanotropismus bei Fischen. In: Zbl. Physiol., Wien 16 (1902), S. 481-483.
- Studien über den Vestibularapparat. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 112/3(1903), S. 315-394.
- Über den Galvanotropismus (Galvanotaxis) bei Fischen. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 114/3 (1905), S. 27-56.
- Über das Gehörorgan der Vögel. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 116/3 (1907), S. 249-292.
- Bemerkungen zu Dr. H. Abels Abhandlung „über Nachempfindungen im Gebiete des kinästhetischen und statischen Sinnes“. In: Zschr. Psychol. Physiol. Sinnesorg. 45 (1907), 1. Abt., S. 78-84.
- Über Ewald's Versuch mit dem pneumatischen Hammer (Bogengangsapparat). In: Zschr. Sinnesphysiol. 42 (1908), S. 373-378.
- Curriculum vitae [1923]. In: Dr. Josef Breuer 1842-1925. Wien o. J. [1927]. S. 9-24.
- Ein telepathisches Dokument. In: Umschau 28 (1924). S. 215 f.
- Josef Breuer / Rudolf Chrobak: Zur Lehre vom Wundfieber. Experimentelle Studie. In: Med. Jb., Wien 22/4 (1867). S. 3-12.
- Josef Breuer / Sigmund Freud: Über den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phänomene. Vorläufige Mittheilung. In: Neurol. Zbl. 12 (1893), S. 4-10, 43-47; zugleich in: Wien. med. Blätter 16 (1893), S. 33-35, 49-51.
- Sigmund Freud / Josef Breuer: Studien über Hysterie. Franz Deuticke, Leipzig + Wien 1895. Neudruck: 6. Auflage. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1991. ISBN 3-596-10446-7
- Josef Breuer / Alois Kreidl: Über die scheinbare Drehung des Gesichtsfeldes während der Einwirkung einer Centrifugalkraft. In: Arch. Physiol. 70 (1898), S. 494-510.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach / Josef Breuer: Ein Briefwechsel. 1889-1916. Bergland-Verlag, Wien 1969
See also
- Hypnoid state
- When Nietzsche Wept
- When Nietzsche Wept (novel)
References
- "Josef Breuer | Austrian physician". 16 June 2023.
- Breuer, Josef (1842-1925) – Encyclopedia of Psychology Archived 2004-12-13 at the Wayback Machine at www.findarticles.com
- Hawkins, J.E. and Schacht, J. "The Emergence of Vestibular Science" Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine (Part 8 of "Sketches of Otohistory") in "Audiology and Neurotology," April 2005.
- O. L. Zangwill, in Richard Gregory ed, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford 1987) p. 118.
- Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for our Times (London 1988) p. 65.
- Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (London 1962) p. 204.
- Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Penguin 1995) pp. 1–2 and p. 10.
- Zangwill, Companion p. 118.
- A Discussion of my book: A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis, and two articles by Dr. Norman Costa (2010)
- Peter Gay, Reading Freud (London 1990) p. 71.
- Robert S. Steele, Freud and Jung p. 50.
Further reading
- "Breuer, Josef." In the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie, vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981, ISBN 0-684-80588-X
- . The Life and Work of Josef Breuer: Physiology and Psychoanalysis. New York: New York University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8147-3427-8
- Zangwill, O. L. "Breuer, Joseph." In The Oxford Companion to the Mind New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 ISBN 0-19-860224-3
External links
- Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology.
Josef Breuer ˈ b r ɔɪ er BROY ur Austrian German ˈbrɔʏɐ 15 January 1842 20 June 1925 was an Austrian physician who made discoveries in neurophysiology and whose work during the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim known as Anna O led to the development of the cathartic method also referred to as the talking cure for psychiatric disorders The method was a major initiatory factor for psychoanalysis as developed by Breuer s friend and collaborator Sigmund Freud Josef BreuerBorn 1842 01 15 15 January 1842 Vienna Austrian EmpireDied20 June 1925 1925 06 20 aged 83 Vienna AustriaEducationUniversity of ViennaSchoolPsychoanalysisEarly lifeBorn in Vienna his father Leopold Breuer taught religion in Vienna s Jewish community Breuer s mother died when he was quite young and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and educated by his father until the age of eight He graduated from the Akademisches Gymnasium of Vienna in 1858 and then studied at the university for one year before enrolling in the medical school of the University of Vienna He passed his medical examinations in 1867 and went to work as assistant to the internist Johann Oppolzer at the university NeurophysiologyBreuer working for Ewald Hering at the military medical school in Vienna was the first to demonstrate the role of the vagus nerve in the reflex nature of respiration This was different from previous physiological belief and changed the way scientists considered the relationship of the lungs to the nervous system The mechanism is now known as the Hering Breuer reflex Independent of each other in 1873 Breuer and the physicist and mathematician Ernst Mach discovered how the sense of balance i e the perception of the head s imbalance functions that it is managed by information the brain receives from the movement of a fluid in the semicircular canals of the inner ear That the sense of balance depends on the three semicircular canals was discovered in 1870 by the physiologist Friedrich Goltz but Goltz did not discover how the balance sensing apparatus functions Anna O Breuer is known best perhaps for his work during the 1880s with Anna O the case pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim a woman suffering from paralysis of her limbs and anaesthesias as well as disturbances of vision and speech Breuer observed that her symptoms reduced or ended after she described them to him Anna O humorously called this procedure chimney sweeping She also invented the more serious appellation for this form of therapy talking cure Breuer later referred to it as the cathartic method Breuer was then a mentor to the young Sigmund Freud and had helped establish him in medical practice Ernest Jones recalled Freud was greatly interested in hearing of the case of Anna O which made a deep impression on him and in his work of 1909 Five Lectures on Psycho Analysis Freud stated I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when Breuer first in 1880 2 made use of this procedure Never before had anyone removed a hysterical symptom by such a method Freud and Breuer documented their discussions of Anna O and other case studies in their 1895 book Studies in Hysteria These discussions of Breuer s treatment of Anna O became a formative basis of psychoanalytic practice especially the importance of fantasies in extreme cases hallucinations hysteria and the concept and method of catharsis which were Breuer s major contributions Louis Breger has observed that in the Studies Freud is looking for a grand theory that will make him famous and because of this he is always fastening on what he thinks will be a single cause of hysteria such as sexual conflict Breuer on the other hand writes about the many factors that produce symptoms including traumas of a variety of kinds He also gives others such as Pierre Janet credit and argues for eclecticism he is open to many different ways of understanding and treating hysteria The two men became increasingly estranged From a Freudian consideration while Breuer with his intelligent and amorous patient Anna O had unwittingly laid the groundwork for psychoanalysis it was Freud who drew the consequences from Breuer s case However Breger notes that Breuer while he valued Freud s contributions didn t agree that sexual issues were the only cause of neurotic symptoms he wrote in a 1907 letter to a colleague that Freud is a man given to absolute and exclusive formulations this is a psychical need which in my opinion leads to excessive generalization Freud later became hostile to Breuer no longer giving him credit and helping spread a rumour that Breuer had been unable to manage erotic attention from Anna O and had abandoned her case though research indicates this never happened and Breuer remained involved with her case for several years while she remained unwell In 1894 Breuer was elected a Corresponding Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences FamilyBreuer married Mathilde Altmann in 1868 and they had five children His daughter Dora later committed suicide rather than be deported by the Nazis citation needed Another one of his daughters Margarete Schiff perished in the ghetto of Theresienstadt on September 9 1942 citation needed Breuer s granddaughter Hanna Schiff died while imprisoned by the Nazis citation needed WorksZwei Falle von Hydrophobie In Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 1868 Sp 178 f 210 213 Das Verhalten der Eigenwarme in Krankheiten In Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 1868 Sp 982 985 998 1002 Die Selbststeuerung der Athmung durch den Nervus vagus In Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien math naturw Kl 58 2 1868 S 909 937 Bemerkungen zu Senator s Beitrage zur Lehre von der Eigenwarme und dem Fieber In Arch path Anat Berlin 46 1969 S 391 f Uber Bogengange des Labyrinths In Allg Wien med Ztg 18 1873 S 598 606 Uber die Function der Bogengange des Ohrlabyrinthes In Med Jb Wien 1874 S 72 124 Zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne Gleichgewichtsorgan Vorlaufige Mittheilung In Anz Ges Arzte Wien 1873 Nr 9 17 Dezember 1873 S 31 33 Beitrage zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne Gleichgewichtsorgan Vestibularapparat des Ohrlabyrinths Zweite Mittheilung In Med Jb Wien 1875 S 87 156 Neue Versuche an den Ohrbogengangen In Arch Physiol 44 1889 S 135 152 Uber die Funktion der Otolithen Apparate In Arch Physiol 48 1891 S 195 306 Uber Brommastitis In Wien med Presse 35 1894 Sp 1028 Uber Bogengange und Raumsinn In Arch Physiol 68 1897 S 596 648 Die Krisis des Darwinismus und die Teleologie Vortrag gehalten am 2 Mai 1902 In Vortrage und Besprechungen 1902 S 43 64 Nachdruck der Ausgabe 1902 Edition discord Tubingen 1986 Uber Galvanotropismus bei Fischen In Zbl Physiol Wien 16 1902 S 481 483 Studien uber den Vestibularapparat In Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien math naturw Kl 112 3 1903 S 315 394 Uber den Galvanotropismus Galvanotaxis bei Fischen In Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien math naturw Kl 114 3 1905 S 27 56 Uber das Gehororgan der Vogel In Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien math naturw Kl 116 3 1907 S 249 292 Bemerkungen zu Dr H Abels Abhandlung uber Nachempfindungen im Gebiete des kinasthetischen und statischen Sinnes In Zschr Psychol Physiol Sinnesorg 45 1907 1 Abt S 78 84 Uber Ewald s Versuch mit dem pneumatischen Hammer Bogengangsapparat In Zschr Sinnesphysiol 42 1908 S 373 378 Curriculum vitae 1923 In Dr Josef Breuer 1842 1925 Wien o J 1927 S 9 24 Ein telepathisches Dokument In Umschau 28 1924 S 215 f Josef Breuer Rudolf Chrobak Zur Lehre vom Wundfieber Experimentelle Studie In Med Jb Wien 22 4 1867 S 3 12 Josef Breuer Sigmund Freud Uber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phanomene Vorlaufige Mittheilung In Neurol Zbl 12 1893 S 4 10 43 47 zugleich in Wien med Blatter 16 1893 S 33 35 49 51 Sigmund Freud Josef Breuer Studien uber Hysterie Franz Deuticke Leipzig Wien 1895 Neudruck 6 Auflage Fischer Frankfurt a M 1991 ISBN 3 596 10446 7 Josef Breuer Alois Kreidl Uber die scheinbare Drehung des Gesichtsfeldes wahrend der Einwirkung einer Centrifugalkraft In Arch Physiol 70 1898 S 494 510 Marie von Ebner Eschenbach Josef Breuer Ein Briefwechsel 1889 1916 Bergland Verlag Wien 1969See alsoPsychiatry portalHypnoid state When Nietzsche Wept When Nietzsche Wept novel References Josef Breuer Austrian physician 16 June 2023 Breuer Josef 1842 1925 Encyclopedia of Psychology Archived 2004 12 13 at the Wayback Machine at www findarticles com Hawkins J E and Schacht J The Emergence of Vestibular Science Archived 2011 07 21 at the Wayback Machine Part 8 of Sketches of Otohistory in Audiology and Neurotology April 2005 O L Zangwill in Richard Gregory ed The Oxford Companion to the Mind Oxford 1987 p 118 Peter Gay Freud A Life for our Times London 1988 p 65 Ernest Jones The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud London 1962 p 204 Sigmund Freud Five Lectures on Psycho Analysis Penguin 1995 pp 1 2 and p 10 Zangwill Companion p 118 A Discussion of my book A Dream of Undying Fame How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis and two articles by Dr Norman Costa 2010 Peter Gay Reading Freud London 1990 p 71 Robert S Steele Freud and Jung p 50 Further reading Breuer Josef In the Dictionary of Scientific Biography edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie vol 2 New York Charles Scribner s Sons 1981 ISBN 0 684 80588 X The Life and Work of Josef Breuer Physiology and Psychoanalysis New York New York University Press 1990 ISBN 0 8147 3427 8 Zangwill O L Breuer Joseph In The Oxford Companion to the Mind New York Oxford University Press 1998 ISBN 0 19 860224 3External linksGale Encyclopedia of Psychology
