Doctor Josef Breuer (1842-1925) Viennese Physician
He found a vital clue in order to extend the use of hypnosis into a more valuable and wider field. He found that one of his patients “Anna O” spoke of her issues when under hypnosis in an emotional manner. When she returned to a fully conscious state her symptoms were gone. For example, on recalling her disgust at seeing a dog drink from a lady companion’s glass of water a year before, she was suddenly able to drink once more, having for some time been able to quench her thirst only by eating fruit such as melons. Breuer reported, Anna fell prey, during her father’s final illness and in the months after his death, to the most appalling symptoms of hysterical paralysis and anesthesia in three out of her four limbs, together with a succession of other distressing psychiatric symptoms. At different times these included weakness, inability to turn her head, diplopia, a nervous cough, loss of appetite, hallucinations, agitation, mood swings, abusive and destructive behaviour, amnesia, somnolence, tunnel vision and partial aphasia.
His young friend Sigmund Freud continued to work with Breuer and studied these effects. Freud, attracted to the research by Breuer, had already been a student of hypnosis at both the Nancy and Salpetriere schools. According to Billa Zanuso, author of The Young Frued, he disagreed with Charcot in two important areas.
First, Freud discarded the theory about hypnosis being useful only for hysterics. Second, he did not believe that deep levels of hypnosis were necessary for change; but, rather, suggestions could be accepted and past events recalled even in a light state of hypnosis.
Their paper, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (1893, tr. 1909), more fully developed in Studien über Hysterie (1895), marked the beginnings of psychoanalysis in the discovery that the symptoms of hysterical patients—directly traceable to psychic trauma in earlier life—represent undischarged emotional energy.
The therapy, called the cathartic method, consisted of having the patient recall and reproduce the forgotten scenes while under hypnosis.
The work was poorly received by the medical profession, and the two men soon separated over Freud’s growing conviction that the undefined energy causing conversion was sexual in nature.
Unfortunately, Freud admitted that he wearied quickly of the “monotony of the sleep suggestions.” When working with one patient, Freud was unable to produce a hypnotic trance, and had almost reached the point of despair when – in desperation – he hit on the idea of trying free association in the waking state. The case proved to be successful, and Freud apparently welcomed the opportunity to drop hypnosis from his methods, creating and publicizing the technique of psychoanalysis. The then taught that psychoanalysis was now “the executor of the estate left by hypnotism.”
According to James Russell, PhD, author of Psychosemantic Parenthetics (and researcher of hypnosis), Freud still used forms of hypnosis even after he supposedly abandoned its use.
My personal opinion is that Freud enjoyed his addiction to cocaine and later developed cancer in the jaw that made it difficult for him to be effective as a hypnotist. According to my research Freud had made it a happen to take on partners to use their knowledge and then leave them after they did not serve his purpose later.
