Josef Breuer facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Josef Breuer
Born	(1842-01-15)15 January 1842 Vienna, Austrian Empire
Died	20 June 1925(1925-06-20) (aged 83) Vienna, Austria
Education	University of Vienna
School	Psychoanalysis
Influenced Sigmund Freud

Josef Breuer (/ˈbrɔɪər/ broy-ur, German: [ˈbʁɔʏɐ]; 15 January 1842 – 20 June 1925) was a distinguished physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work in the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., developed the talking cure (cathartic method) and laid the foundation to psychoanalysis as developed by his protégé Sigmund Freud.

Early life

Born in Vienna, his father, Leopold Breuer, taught religion in Vienna's Jewish community. Breuer's mother died when he was quite young, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and educated by his father until the age of eight. He graduated from the Akademisches Gymnasium of Vienna in 1858 and then studied at the university for one year before enrolling in the medical school of the University of Vienna. He passed his medical exams in 1867 and went to work as assistant to the internist Johann Oppolzer at the university.

Neurophysiology

Breuer, working under Ewald Hering at the military medical school in Vienna, was the first to demonstrate the role of the vagus nerve in the reflex nature of respiration. This was a departure from previous physiological understanding, and changed the way scientists viewed the relationship of the lungs to the nervous system. The mechanism is now known as the Hering–Breuer reflex.

Independent of each other in 1873, Breuer and the physicist and mathematician Ernst Mach discovered how the sense of balance (i.e. the perception of the head's imbalance) functions: that it is managed by information the brain receives from the movement of a fluid in the semicircular canals of the inner ear. That the sense of balance depends on the three semicircular canals was discovered in 1870 by the physiologist Friedrich Goltz, but Goltz did not discover how the balance-sensing apparatus functions.

Anna O.

Breuer is perhaps best known for his work in the 1880s with Anna O. (the pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim), a woman suffering from "paralysis of her limbs, and anaesthesias, as well as disturbances of vision and speech." Breuer observed that her symptoms reduced or disappeared after she described them to him. Anna O. humorously called this procedure chimney sweeping. She also coined the more serious appellation for this form of therapy, talking cure. Breuer later referred to it as the “cathartic method”.

Breuer was then a mentor to the young Sigmund Freud, and had helped set him up in medical practice. Ernest Jones recalled, "Freud was greatly interested in hearing of the case of Anna O, which ... made a deep impression on him"; and in his 1909 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud generously pointed out, "I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when ... Breuer, first (in 1880-2) made use of this procedure ... Never before had anyone removed a hysterical symptom by such a method."

Freud and Breuer documented their discussions of Anna O. and other case studies in their 1895 book, Studies in Hysteria. These discussions of Breuer's treatment of Anna O. became "a formative basis of psychoanalytic practice, especially the importance of fantasies (in extreme cases, hallucinations), hysteria [...], and the concept and method of catharsis which were Breuer's major contributions."

The two men became increasingly estranged. From a Freudian standpoint, "while Breuer, with his intelligent and amorous patient Anna O., had unwittingly laid the groundwork for psychoanalysis, it was Freud who drew the consequences from Breuer's case." Freud later turned on Breuer, no longer giving him credit and helping spread a rumour that Breuer had not been able to handle attention from Anna O. and had abandoned her case, though research indicates that Breuer remained involved with her case for several years while she remained unwell.

In 1894 Breuer was elected a Corresponding Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.

Family

Breuer married Mathilde Altmann in 1868, and they had five children. His daughter Dora took her own life rather than be deported by the Nazis. Another one of his daughters, Margarete Schiff, perished in Theresienstadt on September 9, 1942. Breuer's granddaughter, Hanna Schiff, died while imprisoned by the Nazis.

Works

• Zwei Fälle von Hydrophobie. In: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 (1868). Sp. 178 f., 210-213.
• Das Verhalten der Eigenwärme in Krankheiten. In: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 18 (1868). Sp. 982-985, 998-1002.
• Die Selbststeuerung der Athmung durch den Nervus vagus. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 58/2 (1868), S. 909-937.
• Bemerkungen zu Senator's „Beiträge zur Lehre von der Eigenwärme und dem Fieber“. In: Arch. path. Anat., Berlin 46 (1969), S. 391 f.
• Über Bogengänge des Labyrinths. In: Allg. Wien. med. Ztg. 18 (1873), S. 598, 606.
• Über die Function der Bogengänge des Ohrlabyrinthes. In: Med. Jb., Wien 1874. S. 72-124.
• Zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne (Gleichgewichtsorgan). Vorläufige Mittheilung. In: Anz. Ges. Ärzte, Wien 1873. Nr. 9 (17. Dezember 1873), S. 31-33.
• Beiträge zur Lehre vom statischen Sinne (Gleichgewichtsorgan, Vestibularapparat des Ohrlabyrinths). Zweite Mittheilung. In: Med. Jb., Wien 1875. S. 87-156.
• Neue Versuche an den Ohrbogengängen. In: Arch. Physiol. 44 (1889), S. 135-152.
• Über die Funktion der Otolithen-Apparate. In: Arch. Physiol. 48 (1891), S. 195-306.
• Über Brommastitis. In: Wien. med. Presse 35 (1894), Sp. 1028.
• Über Bogengänge und Raumsinn. In: Arch. Physiol. 68 (1897), S. 596-648.
• Die Krisis des Darwinismus und die Teleologie. Vortrag, gehalten am 2. Mai 1902. In: Vorträge und Besprechungen. (1902), S. 43-64. Nachdruck der Ausgabe 1902: Edition discord, Tübingen 1986.
• Über Galvanotropismus bei Fischen. In: Zbl. Physiol., Wien 16 (1902), S. 481-483.
• Studien über den Vestibularapparat. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 112/3(1903), S. 315-394.
• Über den Galvanotropismus (Galvanotaxis) bei Fischen. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 114/3 (1905), S. 27-56.
• Über das Gehörorgan der Vögel. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, math.-naturw. Kl. 116/3 (1907), S. 249-292.
• Bemerkungen zu Dr. H. Abels Abhandlung „über Nachempfindungen im Gebiete des kinästhetischen und statischen Sinnes“. In: Zschr. Psychol. Physiol. Sinnesorg. 45 (1907), 1. Abt., S. 78-84.
• Über Ewald's Versuch mit dem pneumatischen Hammer (Bogengangsapparat). In: Zschr. Sinnesphysiol. 42 (1908), S. 373-378.
• Curriculum vitae [1923]. In: Dr. Josef Breuer 1842-1925. Wien o. J. [1927]. S. 9-24.
• Ein telepathisches Dokument. In: Umschau 28 (1924). S. 215 f.
• Josef Breuer / Rudolf Chrobak: Zur Lehre vom Wundfieber. Experimentelle Studie. In: Med. Jb., Wien 22/4 (1867). S. 3-12.
• Josef Breuer / Sigmund Freud: Über den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phänomene. Vorläufige Mittheilung. In: Neurol. Zbl. 12 (1893), S. 4-10, 43-47; zugleich in: Wien. med. Blätter 16 (1893), S. 33-35, 49-51.
• Sigmund Freud / Josef Breuer: Studien über Hysterie. Franz Deuticke, Leipzig + Wien 1895. Neudruck: 6. Auflage. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1991. ISBN: 3-596-10446-7
• Josef Breuer / Alois Kreidl: Über die scheinbare Drehung des Gesichtsfeldes während der Einwirkung einer Centrifugalkraft. In: Arch. Physiol. 70 (1898), S. 494-510.
• Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach / Josef Breuer: Ein Briefwechsel. 1889-1916. Bergland-Verlag, Wien 1969

See also

In Spanish: Josef Breuer para niños

• Hypnoid state
• When Nietzsche Wept
• When Nietzsche Wept (novel)