Josef Breuer was a renowned physician, psychiatrist, and physiologist born in Austria. According to some writers, his full name is Josef Robert Breuer.

Early Years

Josef Breuer was born on January 15, 1842 in Vienna, Austria, into a wealthy Jewish family. When his mother died in 1846, little Josef was left in the care of his grandmother and father.

Although he was always attached to Judaism and its fundamental principles, he never practiced this religion. And yet, he was a great defender of the differential principles.

He began his medical career in 1859, when he was 17. He was a student of prominent physicians and even became an assistant to one at the large Vienna General Hospital.

Medical contributions

In 1868 he worked with Dr. Ewald Hering in his physiology laboratory, where he was able to determine the relationship through the lungs and the nervous system, that is, he discovered the regulation of body temperature through breathing. It was in this year that he also married Mathilde Altmann, with whom he would later have a total of five children.

A few years later, Josef Breuer ended his career at the University and started seeing patients privately. In 1873, working in a home laboratory together with a colleague, he managed to discover the relationship between hearing and balance.

Besides serving as a physician and doing research, Josef Breuer also taught at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Vienna, from which he resigned in 1885. On one occasion, while teaching there in 1877, he met Sigmund Freud with whom he established a very good relationship.

Breuer and psychology

Breuer was always a great advisor to Freud as he pursued his career.

His first forays into the treatment of hysteria date back to 1880, when he treated a patient by inducing her into a hypnotic state. It was from this, and through further research, that Josef Breuer established what would be the foundations of psychoanalysis.

He is considered the creator, at the level of psychology, of the cathartic method, from which the psychic pathologies of hysteria can be treated. It was the cathartic method that Sigmund Freud used to create psychoanalysis later.

On a medical and physiological level, he discovered that the ear functions as a regulator of our balance and he also saw that the body's thermal regulation is done through breathing.

Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud: Relationships

Breuer's concept of psychological theory dates back to the summer of 1880 and the treatment of Bertha Pappenheim. She became known under the pseudonym Anna O. in her popular article, a severely disturbed 21-year-old woman who exhibited a range of hysterical symptoms.

In treating her, Breuer invented his cathartic or conversion therapy. Freud was so fascinated by this case that he followed it in detail for many years, and later began to use this "cathartic treatment" under Breuer's guidance.

Breuer's treatment of Anna O. was the first modern example of depth psychotherapy for a long time. In 1893, Breuer and Freud summarized their joint explorations.

breuer's contributions go beyond his role as freud's mentor and collaborator

Breuer is best known for his collaboration with Sigmund Freud, when he presented the case of Anna O. (whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim). The ideas that emerged from this case fascinated Freud so much that he devoted the rest of his career to developing them, and also to shaping what we know as psychoanalysis.

The two men co-wrote the book "Studies on Hysteria," published in 1895, which is considered the founding text of psychoanalysis. However, the importance of Breuer's contributions goes beyond his role as Freud's mentor and collaborator.

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In fact, Breuer feels the foundation of modern therapy. For example, he takes all aspects of his patients' lives and personality and focuses on their emotional expression, differentiating it from the Freudian emphasis on interpretation.

Bruer's Book

Breuer's theoretical essays in "Studies on Hysteria" need careful reading. His essay is over sixty pages long. And it provides comprehensive observations on the relationship between the nature, cause, and treatment of mental illness with surprising clarity, rigor, and depth.

In 1955, James Strachey, the English translator of the book, in describing the essay, said that it was far from outdated. On the contrary, it gives thoughts and suggestions that have not received enough importance and its statements are very valid today.

Breuer's theory of hysteria

According to Breuer's theory of hysteria, mental illness begins when a person is exposed to psychic trauma, which he defined as any situation with a risk of serious physical or emotional harm.

If the individual is unable to feel and express the emotions related to the traumatic experience, then they are dissociated, which means that it is a separate state of consciousness that is inaccessible to ordinary consciousness.

Here, Breuer recognized and built his theory on the work of the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, who was the first to recognize the importance of dissociation in mental illness. Breuer called this altered state of consciousness the "hypnoid state" because it bears a resemblance to the state induced by hypnosis.

The modern view of psychotherapy has increasingly been in favor of breuer

An important body of evidence, compiled by researchers such as Bessel van der Kolk , points to the central role of trauma in the origin of psychopathology.

Understanding the effects of trauma is now a major focus of medical research. Postulated by the urgent need to find effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Breuer's work is also highly relevant to clinical practice.

His concept of the hypnoid state, for example, is very similar, and provides a unifying link between techniques, including full attention, focusing, and neurofeedback, which are important in therapy today.

Breuer and Freud

In 1896, Breuer and Freud separated and never spoke to each other again. This seems to have been caused by disagreement over the question of the veracity of early childhood memories explained by patients. However, despite the differences between the two men, their families remained in close contact.

Final remarks about Josef Breuer

Breuer was a man of wide cultural interests, a friend of many of the most brilliant intellects of his time.

Breuer was considered one of the best physicians and scientists in Vienna, and was the physician of many of the professors at the medical school, as well as of Sigmund Freud and the prime minister of Hungary.

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