STUDIES IN HYSTERIA (1893-1895) by Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud

STUDIES IN HYSTERIA by Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud Authorized Translation with an Introduction by A. A. BRILL BEACON PRESS BEACON HILL BOSTON Studies in Hysteria first published in 1895, is generally considered to be the first important document in the history of psychoanalysis. The product of a friendship between Joseph Breuer 1842-1925 and Sigmund Freud 1856-1939 5 it also marks the end of their collaboration because of emotional and intellectual differences. Only 800 copies of Studies in Hysteria were printed in the original edition thirteen years later, 626 copies had been sold. Copyright 1937 by the Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company. This copyright was renewed in 1950 by the Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company and the beneficial interest therein resides in Rose O, Brill, Edmund Brill and Gioia Bernheim. Manufactured in the United States of America,



In 1893 we published our experiences concerning a new method of investigation and treatment of hysterical phenomena, 1 and added to it in the briefest way possible the theoretical views at which we arrived. This preliminary communication is herewith reprinted as an illustrative and demonstrative thesis. We are also adding here a series of case histories, the selection of which was unfortunately not determined merely by scientific con siderations. Our experience was obtained in private practice from an educated and well read social class, and its contents repeatedly touch upon the most intimate life and destiny of our patients. It would be a serious breach of confidence to publish such information, and a danger lest the patients be recognized and the facts, which were confided solely to the physician, spread in their circle. We have, therefore, been constrained to dispense with some of the most instruc tive and most convincing observations. This naturally concerned in the first place those cases in which sexual and marital relations were of etiological significance. It is for this reason that we can adduce only very incomplete evidence for our view that sexuality plays the principal role in the pathogenesis of hysteria as a source of psychic traumas, and as a motive of defense of the repression of ideas from consciousness. We just had to refrain from publishing those observations which savored strongly of sex. The case histories are followed by a series of theoretical explana tions, and in the last chapter on therapy, the technique of the cathartic method is discussed as it has developed in the hands of the neurologist. If different or even contradictory views are occasionally repre sented, let this not be considered as a vacillation of the conception. It arises from the natural and justified differences of opinion of two observers, who agree concerning the facts and principal views, but whose interpretations and assumptions do not always coincide. J. BREUER. S. FREUD. April, 1895. 1 Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phanomene. Neurol.-Centralblatt, 1893, Nos, 1 and 2. INTRODUCTION In 1907 when I became Freuds translator, the present volume was the standard work for those who aspired to become specialists in the virgin field of psychoanalysis. The cases and theories in the Studien iiber Hysterie were read, studied and discussed in the psychoanalytic circle of Zurich, where I first saw the crepuscular light of psychoanalysis...

J. BREUER, S. FREUD


Read full booke here:

• PREFACE
• ON THE PSYCHICAL MECHANISM OF HYSTERICAL PHENOMENA: PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 1
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 2
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 2: DISCUSSION
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 3
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 4
• CASE HISTORIES – CASE 5
• THEORETICAL
• THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF HYSTERIA 1
• THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF HYSTERIA 2
• THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF HYSTERIA 3