China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Suggestion by Mystic and Religious Methods; Suggestion under Artificially Induced Hysteria—Hypnotism; Psychanalysis
Published in Francis X. Dercum, Rest, Suggestion, 2019
To begin, it is quite evident that Freud did not, in his modification, dispense with hypnosis. Have we not already learned that the hysteric patient reacts just as does the subject under hypnotism? Did not Breuer and Freud in their studies in hysteria emphasize the hypnoid state of hysteric patients? How then can the element of hypnosis be eliminated? Finally, it is doubtful whether a method can be devised more favorable to the development of an autohypnoid state than that presented by Freud's technique. Again, in Breuer and Freud's " Studien," page 13, the employment of medical suggestion is freely admitted. Freud, however, in his psycho-analysis denies the possibility of suggestion. Let us see how much of truth there is in this claim.
Interpreting abnormal psychology in the late nineteenth century
Published in Waltraud Ernst, Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal, 2006
So James would have expected and actively encouraged different interpretations to fit with his own psychological ideas. However, the interpretations also express psychological ideas that James might have taken issue with. For instance, it is likely that he would have eschewed a psychoanalytic interpretation. He did review Breuer and Freud66 in 1894, but as part of a trilogy of reviews which also included Janet’s dissertation under Charcot67 and L. E. Whipple’s Philosophy of Mental Healing.68 The critical notice appeared in the Psychological Review and was one of the first airings of Freud’s work in the United States. However, James played down the significance of Freud and Breuer’s work, and merely saw it as a comment on F. W. H. Myers’s earlier work on the subliminal self, and an independent corroboration of Janet’s views. He did not seem to see the difference between Janet and Freud over the automaticity of changes in principal consciousness from emotional venting in the hypnoid state. Janet did not articulate Freud’s doctrine of abreaction.
Hypnosis and Psychoanalysis: Toward Undoing Freud’s Primal Category Mistake
Published in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2018
In brief, at the start of Studies on Hysteria, Freud espoused Breuer’s explanation of multiplicity as hypnoid, involving altered states of consciousness. Concurrently, Pierre Janet had interpreted hypnoid hysteria as the result of passive constitutional weakness. But as he proceeded, Freud claimed that in all of the cases he had treated, he had discovered active motivated defense rather than passive constitutional weakness at the root of his patients’ hypnoid hysteria. He named this active motivated defensive process as “repression.” By the end of Studies on Hysteria, Freud had discarded consideration of a passive degenerative hypnoid state and maintained that these conditions were related to active motivated defensive repression. Freud fails (or is disinclined) to escape from Janet’s erroneous conceptualization: That all hypnoid states are a by-product of constitutional weakness—an inability to maintain a single center of consciousness. Because Freud finds active motive to defend, then it must be his active “repression,” rather than Janet’s infirmity. This constitutes what I have dubbed as Freud’s Inaugural Category Mistake (O’Neil, 2009): Freud’s inability to conceive of a hypnoid state as resulting from an active motivated defense. My own interpretation in this regard is that Freud is overly motivated to distance himself from Janet, to pit his theory against Janet’s, and prevail. Consequently, he is disinclined to find a “compromise formation”: that among those active motivated distancing defenses might be dédoublement de la personnalité, producing hypnoid hysteria. Freud's conceptual inability led to the systematic exclusion of hypnoid hysteria from further psychoanalytic interest, automatically extending to multiple personality or, in current nomenclature, DID.
The mysteries of hysteria: a historical perspective
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2020
It is around this time (1894) that Freud introduced the psychological notion of Abwehr (defense), a word which he also borrowed to one of his mentors, Theodor Meynert (1833–1892). This defense was a process designed to “forget” painful and traumatic memories, whose representation outside of the consciousness led to intrapsychic conflicts and clinical manifestations. Freud then rapidly emphasized the frequent sexual nature of the memories involved in that mechanism. It is interesting here that in many instances, Freud seemed to use interchangeably the words Abwehr (defense) and Verdrängung (repression), although he also acknowledges that repression into the unconscious is only one form of defense, which may also encompass rejection or conversion. In this publication on the “defense psycho-neuroses” (Abwehr-Neuro-Psychosen), Freud delineated three types of hysteria:Defense hysteria (Abwehrhysterie), in which there is a defense against representations with unpleasant effects (Freud soon abandoned this wording, since he found that the concept was valid far all neuroses).Retention hysteria (Retentionshysterie), in which the subject was unable to discharge emotionally his/her affects through “abreaction” (Freud soon casted doubt on the autonomy of this form, since he emphasized that there always were defense mechanisms also involved).Hypnoid hysteria (Hypnoidhysterie), which was Breuer’s concept of a hypnoid state in response to a previous frightening trauma (but Freud claimed that he had never seen a case himself).