Concept
Cathartic method
The treatment of hysteria that Josef Breuer developed with Anna O. in 1880–82, and that he and Freud set out in the Studies on Hysteria. Under hypnosis the patient is led back to the forgotten event in which a symptom arose. The symptom disappears once that memory is recovered with its affect and the affect is discharged in words, a process they called abreaction. Because many patients could not be hypnotised, Freud replaced hypnosis first with concentration and the pressure of his hand, and then with free association, from which psychoanalysis grew.
Read more- Introduced by
- Josef Breuer
- Key works
- 3
- Related
introduced by
- Josef Breuer 1893 Breuer devised the method while treating Anna O. in 1880–82. The 'Preliminary Communication' of 1893, which he wrote with Freud and which opens the Studies, reports that symptoms vanished for good once the precipitating memory was awakened with its affect and put into words. Freud calls it Breuer's method of cure by inquiry and abreaction under hypnosis.
diverged into
- Working through 1914 Freud presents working through as analysis's counterpart to the abreaction of the cathartic method. Theoretically it does the same job, discharging the affect held back by repression. But it does so through slow work against resistance under the fundamental rule, not through a single hypnotic discharge, and this is what sets analysis apart from suggestion.
- Free association Free association grew out of Breuer's cathartic method and departed from it. Finding that many patients could not be hypnotised, Freud set out to reach the pathogenic memories without hypnosis, then gave up other means of suggestion too, and let patients associate freely.