The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States

May, 1956, marks the centenary of the birth of Sigmund Freud. The movement for which he is remembered, psychoanalysis, now for all practical purposes makes its home in America. Yet, curiously, none of the historians of the various aspects of psychoanalysis seems to have discovered the first report published in the United States of the work of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud on hysteria, out of which grew psychoanalysis. (1) The notice, by William James, appeared in 1894 in the “Psychological Literature” section of the third issue of The Psychological Review.

James, who was trained as a physician, was much interested in psychopathology, which he regarded as a vital part of psychology along with psychical research, and he recognized the work of Breuer and Freud running in the Neurologisches Centralblatt in 1893 as an “important paper.” (2) This notice appeared following a more extensive review prepared by James of a paper by Janet, and he devoted only a paragraph to Breuer and Freud, seeing the significance of their work primarily as “an independent corroboration of Janet's views.” James mentioned the memories of shocks that “fall” into the “sublimnal consciousness,” where they could be discovered only in a “hypnoid” state. Breuer and Freud worked out these “thorns in the spirit.” in James' happy phrase, by means of hypnotism. (3)