Study of the Unconscious Mind

1
Study of the Unconscious Mind

• Anton Mesmer
• Amand Marie Jacques de Chastenet
• Hippolyte Bernheim
• Jean Martin Charcot
• Sigmund Freud
• Influence in World War I

2
Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
3
Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)

• Used magnets to treat illness
• First patient was a 27-year-old female, Fraulein
  Osterlin (1773-1774)

4
Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)

• Used magnets to treat illness
• Believed all things possessed animal magnetism,
  a very fine, invisible fluid

5
Mesmers system

• Animal magnetism fills the universe and forms a
  connection between humans, the earth, and
  heavenly bodies
• Disease originates from the unequal distribution
  of animal magnetism
• Certain techniques can channel, store, or convey
  animal magnetism

6
Mesmers System

• Treated patients individually or in groups
• Invented the baquet to treat groups
• Used animal magnetism to induce trance states, in
  which the disease could be diagnosed and treated
• Known as mesmerism

7
Mesmers System

• Rejected by main-stream physicians and scientists
• 1784 Commission appointed by King Louis XVI of
  France to investigate mesmerism
• Commission included Benjamin Franklin
• Commission concluded that mesmerism resulted from
  suggestion, not movement of magnetic fluids

8
Amand Marie Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de
Puysegur (1751-1825)
9
Puysegur

• Student of Mesmer
• Eventually rejected the theory of animal
  magnetism
• Believed effects were due to psychological
  mechanisms

10

• I believe in the existence within myself of a
  power.
• From this belief derives my will to exert it.
• The entire doctrine of animal magnetism is
  contained in the two words Believe and want.
• I believe that I have the power to set into
  action the vital principle of my fellow-men I
  want to make use of it this is all my science
  and all my means.

11
Puysegur

• Recognized a new form of trance state, called
  magnetic somnambulism or artificial
  somnambulism
• Later named hypnosis by James Braid (1842)

12
Hypnosis

• Two schools in the study of hypnosis emerged
• The Nancy School Led by Hippolyte Bernheim
  (1840-1919)
• The Salpetriere School Led by Jean-Martin
  Charcot (1835-1893)

13
Bernheim

• Argued that hypnosis was a normal,
  non-pathological state
• Suggestion the aptitude to transform an idea
  into an act
• Present in all humans to different degrees
• Same results could be induced in a waking state
  referred to as psychotherapeutics

14
Charcot

• Argued that the trance states associated with
  hypnosis were associated with pathology
• Studied hysterical patients at Salpetriere
  Hospital
• Used hypnosis to remove (and induce) hysterical
  symptomatology

15
Clinical Conditions

• Hysteria
• Multiple Personality Disorder
• Shell Shock

16
Hysteria

• Originally believed to only affect women
  (originated in the uterus)
• Paul Briquet
• Hysteria could occur in both women and men

17
Charcot

• Believed hysteria was a disease caused by
  degeneration of the nervous system, coupled with
  trauma
• The disease emerged when a congenitally weak
  nervous system was exposed to severe physical or
  emotional trauma

18
Railway Spine

• Hysterical disorder appearing in those injured in
  railway accidents
• First identified by John Erichsen in 1865

19
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
20
The Case of Anna O.

• Patient of Joseph Breuer from 1880-1882
• Real name was Bertha Pappenheim
• Spontaneous hypnosis
• Symptoms were alleviated by recollections during
  this altered state
• Emotional trauma at the root of all hysterias

21
Seduction Hypothesis

• Neuroses (and hysteria) rooted in sexual
  trauma/conflict
• Originally viewed the trauma as real later
  argued the trauma was fantasy (1897)
• Central were the Oedipal and Electra Complexes

22
Psychoanalysis

• Treatment for hysteria and neuroses involved
  uncovering of unconscious conflict
• Bringing conflict to consciousness allowed
  catharsis to occur

23
Multiple Personality Disorder

• Presence of more than one identity in different
  states of consciousness
• Identified a number of types
• Mutually cognizant
• Mutually amnestic
• One-way amnestic

24
World War I

• Fought between 1914 and 1918
• Germany Austria-Hungary
• Britain, France, Russia, and U.S.

25
W. H. R. Rivers (1864-1922)

• Physician at the Craiglockhart Hospital
• Pioneered the use of psychotherapy for
  shell-shock
• Shell-shock dissociative condition caused by
  severe trauma
• Differed from Freud with regard to sexual genesis
• Treated through catharsis
• Gave rise to the modern concept of Post-Traumatic
  Stress Disorder