Person

Josef Breuer

1842–1925

Viennese physician whose treatment of “Anna O.” Freud credited as the origin of the cathartic method.

Ideas

1893 introduced Cathartic method
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.
1893 introduced Hypnoid state
The thesis that hypnoid states are the basis and condition of hysteria first appeared in the Preliminary Communication (1893); in his theoretical chapter of Studies on Hysteria Breuer defends the term “hypnoid” as naming the inner likeness of states akin to self-hypnosis.
1895 developed Dissociation
In his theoretical chapter of Studies on Hysteria Breuer accepts, after the French researchers, that a splitting of mental activity occurs, and devotes a section to unconscious ideas and the splitting of the psyche. He prefers to speak of a splitting of the psyche rather than of consciousness, and makes hypnoid states its main condition in the major hysterias.