Anna Shahrour

PPE 4003 Personality

When Nietzsche Wept Final Culminating Project

December 6, 2015

Analyzing Josef Breuer

The Freudian perspective:

According to Freud, the provinces of the mind are the id, the ego, and the
superego. In Josef Breuer’s psyche, the id was the component selfishly seeking pleasure.
This manifested in his obsession with his delusional patient Bertha Pappenheim. Breuer
claimed that he loved Bertha and was sexually attracted to her, but with the help of
Nietzsche, he realized that he had unconsciously made her his getaway to a life away
from his family and responsibilities; she was a dangerous plan that gave him a thrill in his
dull life and a sexual obsession that helped him cope with his inevitable aging.

In one of their sessions, Breuer told Nietzsche: “Before her, I lived within the
rules. Today I flirt with the limits of those rules... I think about exploding my life,
sacrificing my career, committing adultery, losing my family, emigrating, beginning life
again with Bertha… Is Bertha my freedom wish—my escape from the trap of
time?” Breuer’s id was in loss of contact with the reality of his marriage and successful
life; instead, it kept demanding escape, adultery, and a rebellion. Also, Bertha was a
deranged patient of his, which made no sense for him to see her as an escape from a
complicated life. He became fixated on primitive urges, which surfaced in his ego as
discontent with his wife, family, and career.

In contrast, Breuer’s superego demanded that he lived up to higher moral

standards. Like the id, the superego is unrealistic in its demands. However, the superego
refuses the urges of the id and sets its own ideals. Breuer’s superego wanted him to live
with his wife, Mathilde, in love and fidelity, despite their marriage issues and general
dysphoria. Throughout the novel, Breuer’s superego manifested in two ways: the
conscious and the ego-ideal. On one hand, the conscious, which forbade him from
committing immoral acts, demanded that he did not abandon his wife to pursue Bertha
and a new life, and stop having any thoughts of infidelity. When Breuer said, “In fact,
part of the problem is I have so many sexual thoughts about another woman that I feel
guilty touching Mathilde,” it was evident that he was experiencing guilt because of his
thoughts of infidelity, as guilt is a function of the superego when its moral standards are
not met. On the other hand, the ego-ideal, which commanded him to do moral and
idealistic acts, urged him to be loving and considerate of his wife, like the time where he
was hurrying back to the hotel where “My loving but concerned wife will be waiting at
the window, and I have a duty to be sensitive to her feelings.”

Although those conflicts originated in Breuer’s id and superego, they processed

and appeared through his ego. Breuer’s ego was the one in touch with reality. It was the
province of the mind where the conflict between the id and the superego, the selfishness
and selflessness, the amoral and moral, happened. Breuer’s ego settled for a secret
emotional affair with Bertha and an unhappy but manageable life with his family,
practicing medicine. Having to coordinate and satisfy all three of the id, superego, and
reality, Breuer’s ego became anxious; he “felt truly miserable,” and “anxiety weighed
him down.” Breuer constantly complained of feeling unhappy, confused, and indecisive.

For the most part of the novel, Breuer had a dominating id and weak superego,
making him strive to please his id with little regard for what was possible or proper.
Towards the end of the novel, and with the help of his new friend, Nietzsche, Breuer’s
ego regained balance between id and superego, and realigned with reality. Breuer finally
realized that his wife was much more important to him than his obsessions had made it
seem. When that balance was restored, he felt like “I’ve been away for a very long time.
And now I’ve come back.”

The Jungian perspective:

Carl Gustav Jung distinguished eight psychological types that differ in two
aspects: attitude and function. For each of the functions, thinking, feeling, sensing, and
intuiting, two attitudes, introversion and extroversion, are possible.
 As a basic attitude, Breuer was an introvert; he was very responsive to and
influenced by his inner fantasies, dreams, and perceptions. He fantasized about a world
that was different from the one he was living in, which caused him anxiety and
unhappiness. In a way, Jung and Breuer had similar experiences of midlife crises
characterized by introversion. Both men were going through an inner battle with fantasies
and perceptions that caused a lot of tension in their marriages and family lives. While
Jung actually gave in at a point and quit his then job as a lecturer and writer, Breuer was
able to redress his confusion before he could abandon medicine, and succeeded in
reestablishing balance between introversion and extroversion in his psyche. Furthermore,
attitude can influence the four functions: thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting.

First, Breuer was an introverted thinking person. He reacted to external stimuli,

but assigned more importance to his perception than to the facts in processing the
meanings of stimuli. For example, Breuer claimed in the novel that he had lived a
mundane colorless life, when he actually had a successful and respectable career, a
luxurious life, a loving wife and five healthy children. Breuer’s introverted thinking was
less influenced by those facts and more influenced by his negative perception of his life
caused by the midlife crisis.

Second, Breuer was an introverted feeling person. In his evaluation of ideas or

events, he depended more on his subjective perception than he did on objective facts. For
example, in his fantasies of running away with his patient, Bertha, Breuer evaluated the
idea based on his subjective perception of Bertha, a beautiful young lady that was meant
to set him free and keep him youthful, rather than the fact that she was a deranged and
delusional patient that was bound to add more stress and responsibilities to his life had he
run away with her.

Third, Breuer was an introverted sensing person. His sense of sight and sound
were largely influenced by his subjective perceptions rather than the reality of the sensory
stimuli. For example, in his hypnosis trance, Breuer looked at his reflection and saw an
old face with wrinkles; while he was by no means old, Breuer was influenced to see this
because by his growing awareness of his inevitable aging.

Fourth, Breuer was an introverted intuitive person. Introverted intuitive people

have unconscious motives that are strong enough to influence decisions of great
consequences. This was evident in Breuer’s personality when he was about to give up his
life and family to run away with Bertha for motives that were even unclear to him at the
start. Fortunately, Breuer could overcome his obsessions and faulty perceptions before
taking any irreversible actions that could have had detrimental effects on his entire life.

The Horneyian perspective:

According to Horney, the moving towards people is one of three neurotic trends
that people develop to deal with their basic anxiety. Breuer’s basic anxiety could be
traced back to his childhood. His mother’s death when he was very young must have had
detrimental effects on him. Those feelings of loss and grief caused young Breuer to
develop basic anxiety, which fed and was fed by his basic hostility.

A key characteristic of the moving towards people neurotic trend is helplessness.

As a child, Breuer felt helpless when he lost his mother, but could not do anything about
it. As an adolescent and young adult, he felt (unconsciously) helpless against his father’s
wishes and plans for him and felt obligated to fulfill them instead of making his own. As
an adult, he felt helpless in front of his obsessions, inner conflicts, responsibilities, and
dull life.

Breuer’s moving toward people neurotic trend served to protect him and combat
his anxiety and helplessness. This neurotic trend manifested in Breuer’s obsession with
Bertha. In theory, people with moving towards people neurotic trend seek powerful
partners. Although Bertha might not sound like a powerful partner per se, she signified
something similar. Breuer saw in her freedom from his helplessness; she was a choice
that he could make to escape everything he disliked about his life. In that sense, Breuer
was moving towards Bertha, convincing himself that he loved her as an excuse to
abandon his responsibilities. He also depended on her in imagining a new better life
instead of taking responsibility over his choices and plans for the future. Breuer being a
successful, intelligent doctor made his obsession with the deranged Bertha even more
absurd, but not unexpected; individuals with moving toward people neurotic trend often
subordinate themselves to partners of less intelligence or attractiveness to feel more
secure.
 Breuer also sought the approval and respect of others; a strategy that his moving
towards people personality adopts because his self-esteem and self-image are strongly
influenced by people's opinion of him.

The Big-Five perspective:

The Five-Factor Model of Personality proposed that personality is made of five

bipolar traits that follow a bell-shape distribution. These basic traits are extraversion,
neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. To better understand
Breuer’s personality within the Five-Factor approach, it is important to examine each of
his traits, or basic tendencies, on its own.

First, Breuer would score low on extraversion. In most of the novel, he was
reserved and composed and seemed to be hiding the intensity of his discontent with his
current life. Although he was contemplating leaving his family and career, he did not
express those thoughts to his wife, and that caused tension and distance in their marriage.
Breuer only started fully expressing and discussing his negative emotions and obsessions
when he believed Nietzsche could help him restore balance in his psyche.

Second, Breuer would score high on neuroticism. He was suffering from anxiety,
stress, and vulnerability throughout most of the novel. His obsession with Bertha, his
discontent with his career and family life, his sudden realization of his irreversible aging;
all were thoughts that originated from a low self-esteem and a self-pitying neurotic
schema: a key characteristic of neuroticism. Breuer’s neurotic personality made him more
prone to experiencing negative emotions like anxiety, fear, worry, and self-
consciousness, and being less efficient in dealing with them in a healthy way on his own.

Third, Breuer was open to experience. He questioned traditional thinking dictating

that one should be satisfied with life once he/she has a successful career, a good marriage
and children. Breuer reached those achievements, but his openness to new experiences
made him feel that there had to be more to his life. He appeared to be looking for a
change that would open unexplored adventures for him, thus he became obsessed with
Bertha, freedom, and escape. Although he had lived his life working to be a good doctor,
husband, and father, Breuer had the openness and imagination to dream of something
completely different, even if it meant leaving everything behind.

Fourth, Breuer’s personality falls in the middle on the agreeableness scale.

Although he was a stern and serious person, he did not lack good nature. Throughout the
novel, Breuer showed characteristics of both soft-heartedness and harshness depending
on the context and situation. At times, he was patient with people, and at times, he was
irritable and critical of others. Even at times when he resented his marriage most, he still
treated his wife with good manners; in general, Breuer was polite, and that worked well
to make him out as agreeable.

Fifth, Breuer would score high on conscientiousness. He was first an organized

and hardworking doctor, spending days in his clinic, treating patients and conducing
research. Breuer was also an ambitious person, as he wanted to achieve more than he
already did in his life, even though many people would happily settle for what he had. He
was preserving in exploring his psyche and eventually determining to fix his marriage
and enjoy his life as he realized he was lucky to have what he had.

Reference:

Feist, J., Feist, G., & Roberts, T. (2013). Theories of Personality (8th ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill.