Freud was on the right track with Josef Breuer as his mentor (who also followed the trauma model of Pierre Janet). If he had not betrayed Breuer to follow Wilhelm Fliess, who was a little whack, the world of psychology would have progressed much quicker and with much better efficacy for clients. Fliess led Freud in many wrong directions, especially the abandonment of the "seduction theory" that Breuer had passed along to him.
His work on Anna O. led to the Oedipal Theory, exemplified by the case of "Little Hans" (Herbert Graf), because he never succeeded in his treatment of Anna - so he thought there must be something more to hysteria, namely his psychosexual model.
While Freud thought his work with "Hans" was highly successful and proved his psychosexual model. However, in Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities, by Ken Corbett, the author brings forward a follow up interview with both Herbert and and Max Graf (the father) that shows that Freud wrong on this case in almost every way. The parents ended up divorced (from a marriage Freud encouraged in the first place), and Herbert was bitter.
So that is a little more background for this article.
Psychological Science: Sigmund Freud - “A Dream of Undying Fame”
Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim (1859?1936), an Austrian-Jewish feminist and the founder of the Judischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women)
Psychological Science: Sigmund Freud - “A Dream of Undying Fame”
Norman Costa
I invited Louis Breger, PhD to join me in this article devoted to a discussion of Sigmund Freud. After my two-parter, “Sigmund Freud – Personal and Scientific Coward?” [PART 1, PART 2], I received an email from Dr. Breger. A friend directed him to 3Quarksdaily.com, and my second article. He had a few things to say about my article, including a couple of critical comments.
I recognized, immediately, that Breger knew a great deal about Freud – far more than I. Breger has beenProfessor of Psychoanalytic Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, from 1970 to the present, (currently, Emeritus Professor.) In 1990, with a group of colleagues, Dr. Breger created the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) where he was the Founding President from 1990 to 1993.
My interest in Freud is highly circumscribed. Breger is best described as a lifelong scholar of Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as a practitioner, a trainer, and a teacher. Breger directed me to his two books on Freud. The first is an analytical biography, “FREUD: DARKNESS IN THE MIDST OF VISION”, John Wiley & Sons, 2000. The second is “A DREAM OF UNDYING FAME: HOW FREUD BETRAYED HIS MENTOR AND INVENTED PSYCHOANALYSIS,” Basic Books, 2009. The more recent book, included in the title of this article, deals with the territory covered in my writing, and so much more.
Well, I couldn't let him get away after offering only a few comments. He has too much to tell us on the subject. He possesses a great deal of knowledge, and deeply informed views from a lifetime of work. So I asked Dr. Breger if he would contribute to my Monday Musings column on 3Quarksdaily.com. Very graciously, and generously, he agreed to write something for my readers. What follows is a discussion of his latest book and my two-part article on Freud. I will have a few comments following his well done and informative piece.
After looking at the encouraging reviews of his books [DREAM, DARKNESS], I read “A DREAM OF UNDYING FAME.” It is an excellent, and very readable book. I recommend it to all interested in Freud, and the history of psychoanalysis. I've not yet read the biography, but I will.
YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.
Sigmund FreudA Discussion of my book: A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis, and two articles by Dr. Norman Costa
Louis Breger, Ph.D.“If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame; which dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorn
Fanshawe, 1828“The expectation of eternal fame was so beautiful, as was that of certain wealth, complete independence, travels, and lifting the children above the severe worries that robbed me of my youth. Everything depended upon whether or not hysteria would come out right.”
-Sigmund Freud
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 1897I take the title of my new book from the Hawthorne quotation, paralleled, in a striking way, by Freud himself in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess – his “only other” and closest confidant through the 1890s -- because it captures the essential motivation behind Freud’s drive for “eternal fame.” Let me begin with “the severe worries that robbed me of my youth.”
When Freud was a one year old, his mother gave birth to her second son, who died eight months later. He thus lost her, first to a sibling replacement, and then to her grief over the death of her new infant. Maternal losses were repeated over the next years with the births of five sisters and one brother so that, by the time he was ten, his mother had gone through seven pregnancies and there were six living siblings. It is hard to imagine that she had much time to tend to the young Sigi. In addition, his nursemaid, toward whom he felt real affection, was caught stealing and sent to jail. She vanished suddenly from his life in a way that a two-year-old would have no way of understanding. As if these traumatic losses of love and care were not enough, when he was three-and-a-half, his father went bankrupt and the family – who had been living in a one room apartment in the small town of Freiberg – was forced to move and he lost his uncle and aunt figures, his first playmates, and his familiar home.
His father never got back on his feet financially and the family lived in near poverty for many years. As Freud himself put it: I know from my youth that once the wild horses of the pampas have been lassoed, they retain a certain anxiousness for life. Thus, I came to know the helplessness of poverty and continually fear it. All of these events constituted a powerful set of traumas, compounded by the Antisemitism that was always prevalent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All of this left the young Freud in a very helpless and vulnerable state.
Read the whole article - there is much more.
And where did Josef Breuer fit into all this? Breuer – 14 years older -- was a highly successful Viennese physician and brilliant scientist. When Freud set up his new medical practice, the older doctor saw the promise in this gifted young man, took him under his wing, gave the impoverished Freud a monthly stipend – which Breuer never expected to be repaid -- and they became friends and co-workers. The most significant gift that Breuer gave to his struggling young protégé, however, was his description of a young “hysterical” woman – Bertha Pappenheim, later “Anna O.” – whom he had treated some years earlier. Breuer and Bertha together developed what she named the “talking cure”, later called by Breuer the “cathartic method”, which launched psychoanalysis.In the mid-1890s, Freud persuaded Breuer to collaborate on the Studies on Hysteria, a book that is the real beginning of psychoanalysis, both as a method of treatment and a theory. A close reading of the Studies reveals the differences between Freud and Breuer. Freud is looking for a grand theory that will make him famous and, because of this, he is always fastening on what he thinks will be a single cause of hysteria, such as sexual conflict. He also finds it difficult to deal with the deaths and losses that so many of the patients have experienced since they resonated too closely with his own traumas. What is more, he ignores or minimizes the contributions of others in the field. Breuer, on the other hand, writes about the many factors that produce symptoms, including traumas of a variety of kinds. He also gives others, such as Pierre Janet, credit and argues for “eclecticism”; he is open to many different ways of understanding and treating hysteria. Despite his considerable accomplishments, he was known for his “excessive modesty,” the welfare of his patients was more important to him than recognition or fame.
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