PSYCHOANALYSIS: FREUDIAN SCHOOL. In the years 1880-82 a Viennese physician, Dr. Josef Breuer (1842 1925), discovered a new procedure by means of which he relieved a girl, who was suffering from severe hysteria, of her various symptoms. The idea occurred to him that the symptoms were connected with impressions which she had received during a period of excitement while she was nursing her sick father. He therefore induced her, while she was in a state of hypnotic som nambulism, to search for these connections in her memory and to live through the "pathogenic" scenes once again without inhibit ing the effects that arose in the process. He found that when she had done this the symptoms in question disappeared for good.
This was at a date before the investigations of Charcot and Pierre Janet into the origin of hysterical symptoms, and Breuer's discovery was thus entirely uninfluenced by them. But he did not pursue the matter any further at the time, and it was not until some lc) years later that he took it up again in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. In 1895 they published a book, Studien fiber Hysterie, in which Breuer's discoveries were described and an attempt was made to explain them by the theory of Catharsis. According to that hypothesis, hysterical symptoms originate through the energy of a mental process being withheld from con scious influence and being diverted into bodily innervation ("Con version"). A hysterical symptom would thus be a substitute for an omitted mental act and a reminiscence of the occasion which should have given rise to that act. And, on this view, recovery would be a result of the liberation of the affect that had gone astray and of its discharge along a normal path ("Abreaction"). Cathartic treatment gave excellent therapeutic results, but it was found that they were not permanent and that they were dependent on the personal relation between the patient and the physician. Freud, who later proceeded with these investigations by himself, made an alteration in their technique, by replacing hypnosis by the method of free association. He invented the term "psycho
analysis," which in the course of time came to have two meanings: (I) a particular method of treating nervous disorders and (2) the science of unconscious mental processes, which has also been appropriately described as "depth-psychology." Subject Matter of Psychoanalysis.—Psychoanalysis finds a constantly increasing amount of support as a therapeutic pro cedure, owing to the fact that it can do more for certain classes of patients than any other method of treatment. The principal field of its application is in the milder neuroses—hysteria, pho bias and obsessional states, but in malformations of character and in sexual inhibitions or abnormalities it can also bring about marked improvements or even recoveries. Its influence upon dementia praecox and paranoia is doubtful ; on the other hand, in favourable circumstances it can cope with depressive states, even if they are of a severe type.
In every instance the treatment makes heavy claims upon both the physician and the patient : the former requires a special training, and must devote a long period of time to exploring the mind of each patient, while the latter must make considerable sacrifices, both material and mental. Nevertheless, all the trouble involved is as a rule rewarded by the results. Psychoanalysis does not act as a convenient panacea ("cito, tote, jucunde") upon all psychological disorders. On the contrary, its application has been instrumental in making clear for the first time the difficulties and limitations in the treatment of such affections.
The therapeutic results of psychoanalysis depend upon the re placement of unconscious mental acts by conscious ones and are operative in so far as that process has significance in relation to the disorder under treatment. The replacement is effected by overcoming internal resistances in the patient's mind. The future will probably attribute far greater importance to psychoanalysis as the science of the unconscious than as a therapeutic procedure.