Josef Breuer

(1925)

On June 20, 1925, there died in Vienna, in his eighty-fourth year, Josef Breuer, the creator of the cathartic method, whose name is for that reason indissolubly linked with the beginnings of psycho-analysis.

Breuer was a physician, a pupil of the clinician Oppolzer. In his youth he had worked at the physiology of respiration under Ewald Hering, and later, in the scanty hours of leisure allowed by an extensive medical practice, he occupied himself successfully with experiments on the function of the vestibular apparatus in animals. Nothing in his education could lead one to expect that he would gain the first decisive insight into the age-old riddle of the hysterical neurosis and would make a contribution of imperishable value to our knowledge of the human mind. But he was a man of rich and universal gifts, and his interests extended in many directions far beyond his professional activities.

It was in 1880 that chance brought into his hands an unusual patient, a girl of more than ordinary intelligence who had fallen ill of severe hysteria while she was nursing her sick father. It was only some fourteen years later, in our joint publication, Studies on Hysteria (1895d) - and even then unluckily only in a much abbreviated form, censored, too, from considerations of medical discretion - that the world learnt the nature of his treatment of this celebrated ‘first case’, with what immense care and patience he carried out the technique when once he had discovered it, till the patient was freed from all the incomprehensible symptoms of her illness, and what insight he obtained in the course of the work into the mental mechanisms of the neurosis.

We psycho-analysts, who have long been familiar with the idea of devoting hundreds of sessions to a single patient, can form no conception of how novel such a procedure must have seemed forty-five years ago. It must have called for a large amount of personal interest and, if the phrase can be allowed, of medical libido, but also for a considerable degree of freedom of thought and certainty of judgement. At the date of the publication of our Studies we were able to appeal to Charcot’s writings and to Pierre Janet’s investigations, which had by that time deprived Breuer’s discoveries of some of their priority. But when Breuer was treating his first case (in 1881-2) none of this was as yet available. Janet’s Automatisme psychologique appeared in 1889 and his second work, L’état mental des hystériques, not until 1892. It seems that Breuer’s researches were wholly original, and were directed only by the hints offered to him by the material of his case.

I have repeatedly attempted - most recently in my Autobiographical Study (1925d), in Grote’s series, Die Medizin der Gegenwart - to define my share in the Studies which we published jointly. My merit lay chiefly in reviving in Breuer an interest which seemed to have become extinct, and in then urging him on to publication. A kind of reserve which was characteristic of him, an inner modesty, surprising in a man of such a brilliant personality, had led him to keep his astonishing discovery secret for so long that not all of it was any longer new. I found reason later to suppose that a purely emotional factor, too, had given him an aversion to further work on the elucidation of the neuroses. He had come up against something that is never absent - his patient’s transference on to her physician, and he had not grasped the impersonal nature of the process. At the time when he submitted to my influence and was preparing the Studies for publication, his judgement of their significance seemed to be confirmed. ‘I believe’, he told me, ‘that this is the most important thing we two have to give the world.’

Besides the case history of his first patient Breuer contributed a theoretical paper to the Studies. It is very far from being out of date; on the contrary, it conceals thoughts and suggestions which have even now not been turned to sufficient account. Anyone immersing himself in this speculative essay will form a true impression of the mental build of this man, whose scientific interests were, alas, turned in the direction of our psychopathology during only one short episode of his long life.

PREFACE TO RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE’S THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC METHOD

(1922)

It is with great pleasure that I am able to assure the public that the present work by Dr. de Saussure is a book of value and merit. It is especially well calculated to give French readers a correct idea of what psycho-analysis is and what it contains.

Dr. de Saussure has not only conscientiously studied my writings, but in addition he has made the sacrifice of coming to me to undergo an analysis lasting several months. This has put him in a position to form his own judgement on the majority of those questions in psycho-analysis which are still undecided, and to avoid the many distortions and errors which one is accustomed to finding in French as well as in German expositions of psycho-analysis. Nor has he failed to contradict certain false or negligent statements which commentators pass on from one to another: such as, for instance, that all dreams have a sexual meaning or that, according to me, the only motive force in our mental life is that of sexual libido.

Since Dr. de Saussure has said in his preface that I have corrected his work, I must add a qualification; my influence has only made itself felt in a few corrections and comments and I have in no way sought to encroach upon the author’s independence. In the first, theoretical part of this work, I should have expounded a number of things differently from him: for instance, the difficult topic of the preconscious and the unconscious. And above all, I should have treated the Oedipus complex far more exhaustively.

The excellent dream which Dr. Odier has put at the author’s disposal may give even the uninitiated an idea of the wealth of dream-associations and of the relation between the manifest dream-image and the latent thoughts concealed behind it. It demonstrates too the significance that the analysis of a dream can have in the treatment of a patient.

Finally, the remarks which the author makes in conclusion on the technique of psycho-analysis are quite excellent. They are entirely correct and, in spite of their conciseness, leave aside nothing essential. They are convincing evidence of the author’s subtle understanding. The reader should not, of course, conclude that knowledge of these rules of technique alone will make him capable of undertaking an analysis.

To-day psycho-analysis is beginning to arouse in a larger measure the interest of professional men and of the lay public in France as well; it will certainly not find any fewer resistances there than it has encountered previously in other countries. Let us hope that Dr. de Saussure’s book will make an important contribution to the clarification of the discussions that lie ahead.

FREUD

VIENNA, February 19225

PREFACE TO MAX EITINGON’S

REPORT ON THE BERLIN PSYCHO-ANALYTIC POLICLINIC

(MARCH 1920 TO JUNE 1922)

(1923)

My friend Max Eitingon, who created the Berlin Psycho-Analytical Policlinic and has hitherto supported it out of his own resources, has in the following pages made public his reasons for founding it and has also given an account of the Institute’s organization and functions. I can only add to what he has written my wish that individuals or societies may be found elsewhere to follow Eitingon’s example and bring similar institutions into existence. If psycho-analysis, alongside of its scientific significance, has a value as a therapeutic procedure, if it is capable of giving help to sufferers in their struggle to fulfil the demands of civilization, this help should be accessible as well to the great multitude who are too poor themselves to repay an analyst for his laborious work. This seems to be a social necessity particularly in our times, when the intellectual strata of the population, which are especially prone to neurosis, are sinking irresistibly into poverty. Institutes such as the Berlin Policlinic are also alone in a position to overcome the difficulties which otherwise stand in the way of thorough instruction in psycho-analysis. They make possible the education of a considerable number of trained analysts, whose activity must be regarded as the sole possible protection against injury to patients by ignorant and unqualified persons, whether they are laymen or doctors.

LETTER TO FRITZ WITTELS

(1924)

You have given me a Christmas present which is very largely occupied with my own personality. The failure to send a word of thanks for such a gift would be an act of rudeness only to be accounted for by very peculiar motives. Fortunately no such motives exist in this case. Your book is by no means hostile; it is not unduly indiscreet; and it manifests the serious interest in the topic which was to be anticipated in so able a writer as yourself.

I need hardly say that I neither expected nor desired the publication of such a book. It seems to me that the public has no concern with my personality, and can learn nothing from an account of it, so long as my case (for manifold reasons) cannot be expounded without any reserves whatever. But you have thought otherwise. Your own detachment from me, which you consider an advantage, entails serious drawbacks none the less. You know too little of the object of study, and you have not been able to avoid the danger of straining the facts a little in your analytic endeavours. Moreover, I am inclined to think that your adoption of Stekel’s standpoint, and the fact that you contemplate the object of study from his outlook, cannot but have impaired the accuracy of your discernment.

In some respects, I think there are positive distortions, and I believe these to be the outcome of a preconceived notion of yours. You think that a great man must have such and such merits and defects, and must display certain extreme characteristics; and you hold that I belong to the category of great men. That is why you ascribe to me all sorts of qualities many of which are mutually conflicting. Much of general interest might be said on this matter, but unfortunately your relationship to Stekel precludes further attempts on my part to clear up the misunderstanding.

On the other hand, I am glad to acknowledge that your shrewdness has enabled you to detect some things which are well known to myself. For instance, you are right in inferring that I have often been compelled to make détours when following my own path. You are right, too, in thinking that I have no use for other people’s ideas when they are presented to me at an inopportune moment. (Still, as regards the latter point, I think you might have defended me from the accusation that I am repudiating ideas when I am merely unable for the time being to pass judgement on them or to elaborate them.) But I am delighted to find that you do me full justice in the matter of my relations with Adler....

I realize that you may have occasion to revise your text in view of a second edition. With an eye to this possibility, I enclose a list of suggested emendations. These are based on trustworthy data, and are quite independent of my own prepossessions. Some of them relate to matters of trifling importance, but some of them will perhaps lead you to reverse or modify certain inferences. The fact that I send you these corrections is a token that I value your work though I cannot wholly approve it.

LETTER TO SEÑOR LUIS LOPEZ-BALLESTEROS Y DE TORRES

(1923)

When I was a young student, the desire to read the immortal Don Quixote in the original of Cervantes led me to learn, untaught, the lovely Castilian tongue. Thanks to this youthful enthusiasm, I am able to-day - at an advanced age - to test the accuracy of your Spanish version of my works, the reading of which invariably provokes in me a lively appreciation of your very correct interpretation of my thoughts and of the elegance of your style. I am above all astonished that one who, like you, is neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist by profession should have been able to obtain so absolute and precise a mastery over material which is intricate and at times obscure.

LETTER TO LE DISQUE VERT

(1924)

Of the many lessons lavished upon me in the past (1885-6) by the great Charcot at the Salpêtrière, two left me with a deep impression: that one should never tire of considering the same phenomena again and again (or of submitting to their effects), and that one should not mind meeting with contradiction on every side provided one has worked sincerely.

FREUD0

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE JEWISH PRESS CENTRE IN ZURICH

(1925)

...I can say that I stand as far apart from the Jewish religion as from all other religions: that is to say, they are of great significance to me as a subject of scientific interest, but I have no part in them emotionally. On the other hand I have always had a strong feeling of solidarity with my fellow-people, and have always encouraged it in my children as well. We have all remained in the Jewish denomination.

In the time of my youth our free-thinking religious instructors set no store by their pupils’ acquiring a knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature. My education in this field was therefore extremely behindhand, as I have since often regretted.

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