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SIGMUND FREUD

1856 - 1939

Freud's story, like most people's stories, begins with others. In his case those others

were his mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Breuer, and Breuer's patient, called Anna O.

Anna O. was Joseph Breuer's patient from 1880 through 1882. Twenty one years old,

Anna spent most of her time nursing her ailing father. She developed a bad cough that

proved to have no physical basis. She developed some speech difficulties, then

became mute, and then began speaking only in English, rather than her usual German.

When her father died she began to refuse food, and developed an unusual set of

problems. She lost the feeling in her hands and feet, developed some paralysis, and

began to have involuntary spasms. She also had visual hallucinations and tunnel

vision. But when specialists were consulted, no physical causes for these problems

could be found.

If all this weren't enough, she had fairy-tale fantasies, dramatic mood swings, and

made several suicide attempts. Breuer's diagnosis was that she was suffering from

what was then called hysteria (now called conversion disorder), which meant she had

symptoms that appeared to be physical, but were not.

In the evenings, Anna would sink into states of what Breuer called "spontaneous

hypnosis," or what Anna herself called "clouds." Breuer found that, during these

trance-like states, she could explain her day-time fantasies and other experiences, and

she felt better afterwards. Anna called these episodes "chimney sweeping" and "the

talking cure."

Sometimes during "chimney sweeping," some emotional event was recalled that gave

meaning to some particular symptom. The first example came soon after she had

refused to drink for a while: She recalled seeing a woman drink from a glass that a

dog had just drunk from. While recalling this, she experienced strong feelings of

disgust...and then had a drink of water! In other words, her symptom -- an avoidance

of water -- disappeared as soon as she remembered its root event, and experienced the

strong emotion that would be appropriate to that event. Breuer called this catharsis,

from the Greek word for cleansing.

It was eleven years later that Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund Freud, wrote a book

on hysteria. In it they explained their theory: Every hysteria is the result of a traumatic

experience, one that cannot be integrated into the person's understanding of the world.

The emotions appropriate to the trauma are not expressed in any direct fashion, but do

not simply evaporate: They express themselves in behaviors that in a weak, vague

way offer a response to the trauma. These symptoms are, in other words, meaningful.

When the client can be made aware of the meanings of his or her symptoms (through

hypnosis, for example) then the unexpressed emotions are released and so no longer

need to express themselves as symptoms. It is analogous to lancing a boil or draining

an infection.

In this way, Anna got rid of symptom after symptom. But it must be noted that she

needed Breuer to do this: Whenever she was in one of her hypnotic states, she had to

feel his hands to make sure it was him before talking! And sadly, new problems

continued to arise.

According to Freud, Breuer recognized that she had fallen in love with him, and that

he was falling in love with her. Plus, she was telling everyone she was pregnant with

his child. You might say she wanted it so badly that her mind told her body it was

true, and she developed an hysterical pregnancy. Breuer, a married man in a Victorian

era, abruptly ended their sessions together, and lost all interest in hysteria.

It was Freud who would later add what Breuer did not acknowledge publicly -- that

secret sexual desires lay at the bottom of all these hysterical neuroses.

To finish her story, Anna spent time in a sanatorium. Later, she became a well-

respected and active figure -- the first social worker in Germany -- under her true

name, Bertha Pappenheim. She died in 1936. She will be remembered, not only for

her own accomplishments, but as the inspiration for the most influential personality

theory we have ever had.

Biography

Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in a small town -- Freiberg -- in Moravia. His

father was a wool merchant with a keen mind and a good sense of humor. His mother

was a lively woman, her husband's second wife and 20 years younger. She was 21

years old when she gave birth to her first son, her darling, Sigmund. Sigmund had two

older half-brothers and six younger siblings. When he was four or five -- he wasn't

sure -- the family moved to Vienna, where he lived most of his life.

A brilliant child, always at the head of his class, he went to medical school, one of the

few viable options for a bright Jewish boy in Vienna those days. There, he became

involved in research under the direction of a physiology professor named Ernst

Brücke. Brücke believed in what was then a popular, if radical, notion, which we now

call reductionism: "No other forces than the common physical-chemical ones are

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SIGMUND FREUD 1856 - 1939 Freud's story, like most people's stories, begins with others. In his case those others were his mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Breuer, and Breuer's patient, called Anna O. Anna O. was Joseph Breuer's patient from 1880 through 1882. Twenty one years old, Anna spent most of her time nursing her ailing father. She developed a bad cough that proved to have no physical basis. She developed some speech difficulties, then became mute, and then began speaking only in English, rather than her usual German. When her father died she began to refuse food, and developed an unusual set of problems. She lost the feeling in her hands and feet, developed some paralysis, and began to have involuntary spasms. She also had visual hallucinations and tunnel vision. But when specialists were consulted, no physical causes for these problems could be found. If all this weren't enough, she had fairy-tale fantasies, dramatic mood swings, and made several suicide attempts. Breuer's diagnosis was that she was suffering from what was then called hysteria (now called conversion disorder), which meant she had symptoms that appeared to be physical, but were not. In the evenings, Anna would sink into states of what Breuer called "spontaneous hypnosis," or what Anna herself called "clouds." Breuer found that, during these trance-like states, she could explain her day-time fantasies and other experiences, and she felt better afterwards. Anna called these episodes "chimney sweeping" and ...
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