Josef Breuer

A  RESPECTED  VIENNESE  NEUROLOGIST;
      . . . discovered the fact that, in Hypnosis a significant memory might be re-lived, and that the resultant release of emotion had therapeutic value.   In 1880, Dr. Breuer was treating a patient with multiple incapacitating hysterical symptoms, using Hypnosis initially to remove her symptoms via Direct Suggestion.   She responded in an unusual manner; lapsing into Somnambulistic states of altered consciousness, experiencing hallucinations which she described vividly.

      Sigmud Freud (1856-1939)   came to Paris to study neuropathology under Charcot in the 1880's.   There he became proficient at Hypnotic Induction Techniques, which he found instrumental in distinguishing hysteria from neurologically based illnesses.   As he became comfortable with the use of Hypnosis, he also found himself absorbed in the concept of Dissociation and the Traumatic Theory of hysterical sympton formation.
      The concept of catharsis was used by Aristotle in connection with the release of pent-up emotion (as in aesthetic experience).   However it's introduction into the history of Hypnosis did not occur until Freud, after several months of working in the Charcot camp, returned to Vienna.   There Freud found himself working with Dr. Breuer.   Freud tried to interest Charcot in Dr. Breuer's method of permitting the patient to talk freely and express deep feelings, but Charcot was not impressed.

      The colaborative work of Freud and Breuer led to the publication of important clinical findings in their ^«Studies on Hysteria (1895).^»   In this publication, they demonstrated the use of the abreactive method of Hypnosis as a Cathartic therapeutic tool; by raising to consciousness the memories and related emotions deriving from traumatic events immediately responsible for producing hysterical symptoms in those patients.

      Dr.Freud  asserted that the dissociated set of impulses found in the hystrionic patient must be qualitatively different from those found in the mainstream of their personal consciousness, and therefore must have been "pushed" from awareness, (a form of Amnesia) as an act of self protection from the apparent  'Psychological Conflict.'

The Unconscious Mïnd becomes a powerful human tool !