Talking Cure - Development

Development

Bertha's symptoms - 'headaches, intervals of excitement, curious disturbances of vision, partial paralyses and loss of sensation' - which had no organic origin and are currently referred to as somatoform disorders, were found to improve once repressed trauma and their related emotions were expressed, a process later called catharsis. Peter Gay considered that "Breuer rightly claimed a quarter of a century later that his treatment of Bertha Pappenheim contained 'the germ cell of the whole of psychoanalysis'".

The term "talking cure" was later adopted by Sigmund Freud to describe the fundamental work of psychoanalysis. He himself referenced Breuer and Anna O. in his Lectures on Psychoanalysis at Clark University, Worcester, MA, in September 1909: "The patient herself, who, strange to say, could at this time only speak and understand English, christened this novel kind of treatment the 'talking cure' or used to refer to it jokingly as 'chimney-sweeping'".

Read more about this topic:  Talking Cure

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.
    Benito Mussolini (1883–1945)