Breyer Josef is an Australian physician and physiologist whom Sigmund Freud and others called the ancestor of psychoanalysis. He managed to cure the patient from symptoms of hysteria after he, under hypnosis, helped her remember unpleasant moments from the past. He talked about his method and the results obtained to Sigmund Freud, and also transferred his patients to him.
Joseph Breyer: biography
Born 01/15/1842 in Vienna and died there on 06/20/1925. Joseph Leopold's father (1791-1872) was a religion teacher employed by the Vienna Jewish community. Breyer described him as belonging to "that 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 Joseph spent his early years with his grandmother. His father taught him to eight, and then he entered the Vienna Academic Gymnasium, which he graduated in 1858. The following year, after completing a university course, Joseph Breyer entered the medical school of Vienna University and graduated from medical school in 1867. In the same year, immediately after passing the exam, he became assistant physician Johann Oppolzer. When he died in 1871, Breyer began his own private practice.
Vienna's best doctor
In 1875, Breyer became a private assistant professor of therapy. He resigned from this post on July 7, 1885, as he was denied access to patients for educational purposes. He also refused to allow surgeon Billroth to nominate him as an associate professor. His formal relationship with the medical faculty was thus tense.
At the same time, Breyer was recognized as one of the best doctors and scientists of Vienna. The work became his main interest, and although he once called himself a "general practitioner", he was, as they say today, a general practitioner. Some idea of Breyer’s reputation can be given by the fact that among his patients were many professors of the medical faculty, as well as Sigmund Freud and the Hungarian Prime Minister. In 1894, he was elected to the Vienna Academy of Sciences on the proposal of its most prominent members: physicist Ernst Mach and physiologists Ewald Goering and Sigmund Exner.
Personal life
On May 20, 1868, Breyer Joseph married Matilda Altman, who gave birth to five children: Robert, Bert Hammershlyag, Margaret Schiff, Hans and Douro. Breyer's daughter Dora committed suicide, not wanting to be captured by the Nazis. They killed Breyer’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 physiology of respiration (Goering-Breyer reflex). In 1871 he began his practice in Vienna. At the same time, he studied the function of the inner ear (Mach-Breyer theory on the flow of endolymphal fluid). Having become a therapist in 1874, he returned to research in 1884.
Breyer was a friend and family doctor of some members of the Vienna College of Education and the capital's high society. He maintained correspondence with artists, writers, philosophers, psychologists and colleagues in his field, and in 1894 he 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, as evidenced by his participation in the 1902 conference and the exchange of letters with Franz von Brentano. He was an active participant in discussions on 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 him from Goethe and Gustav Theodor Fechner. His favorite aphorism was the statement by Spinoza Suum esse conservare ("Keep your existence"). He was embraced by a form of skepticism and, following William Thackeray, a “but demon,” which forced him to question any newly acquired knowledge. Due to his detailed knowledge of the history of ideas, the social history and political conditions of his era, as well as for reasons related to his own life, he considered it almost impossible for him to take dubious actions.
The basis of Breyer's research in the field of physiology was the desire to find the relationship between structure and function, and, therefore, to identify 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 Brucke, Hermann von Helmholtz and Dubois-Reymond, Breyer believed in neovitalism.
Beginning of Psychoanalysis
In 1880-1882, he treated a young patient, Bert Pappenheim (Anna O.), who suffered from nervous cough and many other hysterical symptoms (mood swings, changes in states of consciousness, visual impairment, paralysis and seizures, 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 a certain time of the day in spontaneous autogypnotic states. Based on these observations, initially by accident, the patient and the doctor developed a systematic procedure according to which individual symptoms were gradually recalled in the reverse chronological order until they disappeared after the original scene was fully reproduced. Sometimes artificial hypnosis was used during therapy if the patient did not enter a state of self-hypnosis.
During the treatment, Anna O. was required to stay in a clinic near Vienna 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. These included temporary forgetting the mother tongue and severe trigeminal neuralgia, which required addictive morphine treatment. Because of these symptoms, Breyer 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 completely cured.
Collaboration with Freud
In 1882, Breyer Joseph discussed the above case with his colleague Sigmund Freud, who was 14 years younger. After the latter began to work as a neuropathologist, he tested this method on his patients. Based on 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 purifying the emotions of the audience )
In 1893, they published a preliminary report "On the mental mechanisms of hysterical phenomena." Two years later, Hysteria Research followed, the “cornerstone of psychoanalysis,” which laid the foundations for this area of psychiatry. The work had a chapter on theory (Breyer), another on therapy (Freud), and five case histories (Anna O., Emmy von N., Katarina, Lucy R., Elizabeth von R.).
Leaving Psychoanalysis
Freud continued to develop theory and technology during his collaboration with Breyer (defensive neurosis, free association). Joseph 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 the hypothesis that Anna O.'s treatment was suddenly interrupted due to a strong erotic transfer, accompanied by hysterical pregnancy and childbirth. This version of events, recreated by Freud and distributed 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, the facts were not supported.
Versatile personality
Joseph Breyer was friendly 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-Eshenbach, and was friends with Mach, whom he met while studying the inner ear. Breyer's opinion on literary and philosophical questions seems to have been widely respected. Breyer was fluent in 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.
Joseph Breyer: interesting facts from life
- After his patient, Anna O., developed a strong attachment to him that was of a pronounced sexual nature, Breyer Josef transferred the work in the field of psychotherapy, requiring direct contact with patients, to Sigmund Freud.
- Breyer discovered that neurotic symptoms occur due to subconscious processes, and go away when they become aware.
- Sigmund Freud owes his achievements in psychotherapy to Breuer, who introduced him to his discoveries and transferred his patients to him.
- In 1868, he described the Goering-Breyer reflex, which is used to control inhalation and inhalation during normal breathing.
- In 1873, Breyer discovered the sensory function of the semicircular canals of the bony labyrinth of the inner ear and their relationship with spatial orientation and a sense of balance.
- In his will, he expressed a desire to be cremated, and it was fulfilled.