What is the Therapeutic Value of Abreaction?

The concept of abreaction, as conceived and formulated by Breuer and Freud in their Studies in Hysteria, has played a significant part in the development of psychoanalysis, and also, more recently, in the development of two other forms of psychotherapy; namely, hypnoanalysis and narcoanalysis. One may go so far, indeed, as to say that at the beginning it appeared to constitute one of the very cornerstones of analytic therapy. In comparatively recent years, however, some conflicting opinions have been uttered with regard to the actual value of abreaction as a factor in rational psychotherapeutic procedure. To speak more specifically, some have been inclined to regard it as the sine qua non of success in treatment; others have attributed to it a smaller importance, deeming it to be but one of several vital and indispensable factors involved in the process of cure. On account of such a division of scientific opinion, it may be expedient at this time to make some systematic effort in the direction of determining the relative value of abreaction in the three forms of therapy already mentioned.

In formulating their concept of what they elected to term abreaction, Breuer and Freud had in mind a particular process whereby a patient might help to free himself or herself from the deleterious results of certain pathogenic affects by bringing these affects back into the conscious mind and re-experiencing them in all their original force and intensity. Although Aristotle had long ago been cognizant of benefits capable of being derived from a sort of emotional “catharsis,” it was not until the time of Breuer and Freud that such a concept actually found a place for itself in psychological medicine. As a matter of fact, it is significant that the method which was later to be developed into psychoanalysis was originally known as the “cathartic” method. The abreactive process was first found useful by Breuer in his treatment of a young woman named Anna O., who presented a group of som