From Breuer to Freud

The reissue of Breuer's and Freud's Studies on Hysteria 2 provides the occasion to review the early formulations of the theory of mind in psychoanalysis. The style of Freud's thinking and the crystallization of his fundamental assumptions can be clearly seen in the early proposals. In a simple form Freud began in his “The Defense Neuro-Psychoses” 5 and in Studies on Hysteria his theory of mind, a theory which was not shared by Breuer and that marked and still marks a sharp difference between psychoanalytic and American academic psychologies. These differences, often felt but seldom discussed, are fundamental in that they indicate some of the dimensions of the challenge to the imagination, whether liberal, existential, or Zen Buddhist, to construct a psychology complex enough to account for the richness and variety of thought, experience and behavior.

Discussions of Freud and his psychology are less passionate these days than formerly, but enough of the aura of controversy still exists around psychoanalytic doctrines so that anyone who would presume to reject, modify, enshrine, or even state them should indicate his credentials and, as best he can, his regulating assumptions about the Freudian assertions. I am an experimental psychologist, a specialist in learning phenomena in cats, rats, and college sophomores—and in about that order. I face the problems of coming to terms with psychoanalytic formulations as they have specifiable empirical validity or theoretical utility in predicting general behavior. Since I did not learn my psychology in the psychoanalytic tradition—though none of us are untouched by it—my regard for the psychoanalytic system is that of an interested observer rather than a participant. I read Freud's works as nineteenth-century classical continental psychology, not far removed from the scholastic tradition, but far enough to apply criticism of a contemporary scale. In spite of this view, I admire