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- Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement by Sigmund Freud is a seminal work that chronicles the origins, development, and early controversies of psychoanalysis, as recounted by its founder. Written in 1914, this book serves as both a historical document and a personal account, offering readers an in-depth look at the intellectual and social context in which psychoanalysis emerged. Freud traces the evolution of his theories from their roots in the study of hysteria and the use of hypnosis, through the formulation of key concepts such as repression, the unconscious, and the mechanisms of defense. The narrative details Freud’s early collaborations and subsequent rifts with prominent figures like Josef Breuer, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, highlighting the philosophical and methodological disagreements that led to the fragmentation of the psychoanalytic movement. Freud defends the scientific validity of psychoanalysis against its critics and addresses the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that surrounded his work. He also discusses the establishment of psychoanalytic societies and journals, the spread of psychoanalytic ideas across Europe and America, and the challenges faced by practitioners in gaining acceptance within the medical and academic communities. Throughout the book, Freud’s voice is both passionate and polemical, reflecting his deep commitment to the advancement of psychoanalysis as a science of the mind. He provides insights into the personal and professional struggles that accompanied the movement’s growth, as well as the enduring significance of psychoanalytic concepts in understanding human behavior. The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement remains an essential text for anyone interested in the history of psychology, the development of modern thought, and the life and legacy of Sigmund Freud.
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THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT
Edited by
Drs. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE and WM. A. WHITE
Numbers Issued
1. Outlines of Psychiatry. (5th Edition.) $3.00.
2. Studies in Paranoia. (Out of Print.)
3. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. (Out of Print).
4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses.
5. The Wassermann Serum Diagnosis in Psychiatry. $2.00.
6. Epidemic Poliomyelitis. New York, 1907. (Out of Print).
7. Three Contributions to Sexual Theory. (2d Ed.) $2.00.
8. Mental Mechanisms. $2.00. By Dr. Wm. A. White.
9. Studies in Psychiatry. $2.00.
10. Handbook of Mental Examination Methods. $2.00.
11. The Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism. $0.60.
12. Cerebellar Functions. $3.00. By Dr. André-Thomas.
13. History of Prison Psychoses. $1.25.
14. General Paresis. $3.00.
15. Dreams and Myths. $1.00.
16. Poliomyelitis. $3.00.
17. Freud’s Theories of the Neuroses. $2.00.
18. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. $1.00.
19. The Theory of Psychoanalysis. $1.50.
20. Vagotonia. By Drs. Eppinger and Hess.
21. Wishfulfillment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales.
By Dr. Ricklin.
22. The Dream Problem. By Dr. A. E. Maeder.
23. The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences. $1.50. By Dr. O. Rank and D. H. Sachs.
24. Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Compensation.
25. The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement. $0.60.
I
If in what follows I bring any contribution to the history of the psychoanalytic movement nobody must be surprised at the subjective nature of this paper, nor at the rôle which falls to me therein. For psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years I was the only one occupied with it, and all the annoyance which this new subject caused among my contemporaries has been hurled upon my head in the form of criticism. Even today, when I am no longer the only psychoanalyst, I feel myself justified in assuming that none can know better than myself what psychoanalysis is, wherein it differs from other methods of investigating the psychic life, what its name should cover, or what might better be designated as something else.
In the year 1909, when I was first privileged to speak publicly on psychoanalysis in an American University, fired by this momentous occasion for my endeavors, I declared that it was not myself who brought psychoanalysis into existence. I said that it was Josef Breuer, who had merited this honor at a time when I was a student and busy working for my examinations (1880–1882).[1] Since then, well-intentioned friends have frequently repeated that I then expressed my gratitude out of all due proportion. They considered that, as on previous occasions, I should have dignified Breuer’s “cathartic procedure” as merely preliminary to psychoanalysis, and should have claimed that psychoanalysis itself only began with my rejection of the hypnotic technique and my introduction of free association. Now it is really a matter of indifference whether the history of psychoanalysis be considered to have started with the cathartic method or only with my modification of the same. I only enter into this uninteresting question because some opponents of psychoanalysis are wont to recall, now and then, that the art of psychoanalysis did not originate with me at all, but with Breuer. Naturally, this only happens to be the case when their attitude permits them to find in psychoanalysis something that is noteworthy; on the other hand when their repudiation of psychoanalysis is unlimited, then psychoanalysis is always indisputably my creation. I have never yet heard that Breuer’s great part in psychoanalysis has brought him an equal measure of insult and reproach. As I have recognized long since that it is the inevitable fate of psychoanalysis to arouse opposition and to embitter people, I have come to the conclusion that I must surely be the originator of all that characterizes psychoanalysis. I add, with satisfaction, that none of the attempts to belittle my share in this much disdained psychoanalysis has ever come from Breuer himself, or could boast of his support.
The content of Breuer’s discovery has been so often presented that a detailed discussion of it here may be omitted. Its fundamental fact is that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend upon impressive but forgotten scenes in their lives (traumata). The therapy founded thereon was to cause the patients to recall and reproduce these experiences under hypnosis (catharsis), and the fragmentary theory, deduced from it was that these symptoms corresponded to an abnormal use of undischarged sums of excitement (conversion). In his theoretical contribution to the “Studies of Hysteria” Breuer, wherever obliged to mention conversion, has always added my name in parenthesis, as though this first attempt at a theoretical formulation was my mental property. I think this allotment refers only to the nomenclature, whilst the conception itself occurred to us both at the same time.
It is also well known that Breuer, after his first experience with it, allowed the cathartic treatment to rest for a number of years and only resumed it after I caused him to do so, on my return from Charcot. He was then an internist and taken up with a rather busy medical practice. I had become a physician quite reluctantly but had, at that time, received a strong motive for desiring to help nervous patients or, at least, to learn to understand something of their conditions. I had placed reliance on physical therapy and found myself helpless in the face of disappointments that came to me with W. Erb’s “Electrotherapy,” so rich in advice and indications. If I did not, at that time, pilot myself independently to the opinion later announced by Moebius, that the successes of electrotherapy in nervous disorders are the results of suggestion, it was surely only the absence of these successes that was to blame. The treatment by suggestion in deep hypnosis seemed to offer me at that time sufficient compensation for the lost electrical therapy. I learned this treatment through the extremely impressive demonstrations of Liébault and Bernheim. But the investigation under hypnosis with which I became acquainted through Breuer, I found, owing to its automatic manner of working and the simultaneous gratification of one’s eagerness for knowledge, much more attractive than the monotonous and violent suggestive command which was devoid of every possibility of inquiry.
As one of the latest achievements of psychoanalysis, we have lately been admonished to put the actual conflict and the cause of the illness into the foreground of analysis. This is exactly what Breuer and I did in the beginning of our work with the cathartic method. We guided the patient’s attention directly to the traumatic scene during which the symptom had arisen, tried to find therein the psychic conflict and to free the repressed affect. We thus discovered the procedure characteristic of the psychic processes of the neuroses which I later named regression. The associations of the patients went back from the scene to be explained, to earlier experiences, and this forced the analysis which was to correct the present to occupy itself with the past. This regression led even further backwards. At first it went quite regularly to the time of puberty. Later, however, such failures as gaps in the understanding tempted the analytic work further back into the years of childhood which had, hitherto, been inaccessible to every sort of investigation. This regressive direction became an important characteristic of the analysis. It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual, except by going back to something in the past. It even proved that every pathological experience presupposes an earlier one which, though not in itself pathological, lent a pathological quality to the later occurrence. But the temptation to stop short at the known actual cause was so great that even in later analyses I yielded to it. In the case of the patient called “Dora,” carried out in 1899, the scene which caused the outbreak of the actual illness was known to me. I tried uncounted times to analyse this experience, but all that I could receive to my direct demands was the same scanty and broken description. Only after a long detour, which led through the earliest childhood of the patient, a dream appeared in the analysis of which the hitherto forgotten details of the scene were remembered, and this made possible the understanding and solution of the actual conflict.
From this one example it may be seen how misleading is the above mentioned admonition and how much of a scientific regression it is to follow the advice of neglecting the regression in the analytic technique.
The first difference of opinion between Breuer and myself came to light on a question of the more intimate psychic mechanism of hysteria. He still favored a physiological theory, so to speak, and wished to explain the psychic splitting of consciousness of hysterical subjects by means of the non-communication of various psychic states (or states of consciousness, as we then called them). He thus created the theory of the “hypnoid states,” the results of which were supposed to bring the unassimilated foreign body into the “waking consciousness.” I had formulated this to myself less scientifically. I suspected everywhere tendencies and strivings analogous to those of everyday life and conceived the psychic splitting itself as a result of a repelling process, which I then called “defense” and later “regression.” I made a short-lived attempt to reconcile both mechanisms, but as experience showed me always the same and only one thing, my defense theory, I soon became opposed to Breuer’s theory of hypnoid states.
I am, however, quite certain that this difference of opinion had nothing to do with the parting of the ways which occurred soon afterward between us. The latter had a deeper reason, but it happened in such a manner that at first I did not understand it, and only later did I learn to interpret it, following many good indexes. It will be recalled that Breuer had stated, concerning his first famous patient, that the sexual element had been astonishingly undeveloped in her and had never contributed anything to her very marked morbid picture.[2] I have always wondered why the critics of my theory of the sexual etiology of the neuroses have not often opposed it with this assertion of Breuer, and up to this day I do not know whether in this reticence I am to see a proof of their discretion, or of their lack of observation. Whoever will reread the history of Breuer’s patient in the light of the experience gained in the last twenty years, will have no difficulty in understanding the symbolism of the snakes and of the arm. By taking into account also the situation at the sick-bed of the father, he will easily guess the actual meaning of that symptom-formation. His opinion as to the part sexuality played in the psychic life of that girl will then differ greatly from that of her physician. To cure the patient Breuer utilized the most intensive suggestive rapport which may serve us as prototype of that which we call “transference.” Now I have strong grounds to suppose that Breuer, after the disposal of the symptoms, must have discovered the sexual motivity of this transference by new signs, but that the general nature of this unexpected phenomenon escaped him, so that here, as though hit by “an untoward event,” he broke off the investigation. I did not obtain from him any direct information of this, but at different times he has given me sufficient connecting links to justify me in making this combination. And then, as I stood more and more decidedly for the significance of sexuality in the causation of the neuroses, Breuer was the first to show me those reactions of unwilling rejection, with which it was my lot to become so familiar later on, but which I had then not yet recognized as my unavoidable destiny.
The fact that a grossly sexual, tender or inimical, transference occurs in every treatment of a neurosis, although this was neither desired nor induced by either party, has, for me, always seemed to be the most unshakable proof that the forces of the neuroses originate in the sexual life. This argument has surely not been seriously enough considered, for if it were, there would be no question as to where the investigation would tend. For my own conviction, it has remained decisive over and above the special results of the work of the analysis.
