Eugen Bleuler

The same constellation comes into play, according to our hypothesis, when our patient produces the eruptive idea as a surrogate for the forgotten idea which is the object of the quest.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is very useful to designate a group of ideas which belong together and have a common emotive tone, according to the custom of the Zürich school, Bleuler, Jung and others, as a complex.

So we can say that if we set out from the last memories of the patient to look for a repressed complex, that we have every prospect of discovering it, if only the patient will communicate to us a sufficient number of the ideas which come into his head.

so we let the patient speak along any line that he desires and cling to the hypothesis that nothing can occur to him except what has some indirect bearing on the complex that we are seeking if this method of discovering the repressed complexes seems too circumstantial i can at least assure you that it is the only available one In practicing this technique, one is further bothered by the fact that the patient often stops, is at a standstill, and considers that he has nothing to say.

The emotion of sex love does not make its appearance for the first time at the period of adolescence as has been thought.

he has as we should say in europe worked by the american method and has gathered not less than two thousand five hundred positive observations in the course of fifteen years among them eight hundred of his own he says of the science by which this amorous condition manifests itself the unprejudiced mind in observing these manifestations in hundreds of couples of children cannot escape referring them to sex origin the most exacting mind is satisfied when to these observations are added the confessions of those who have as children experienced the emotion to a marked degree of intensity and whose memories of childhood are relatively distinct those of you who are unwilling to believe in infantile sexuality will be most astonished to hear that among those children who fell in love so early not a few are of the tender ages of three four and five years it would not be surprising if you should believe the observations of a fellow-countryman rather than my own fortunately a short time ago from the analysis of a five-year-old boy who was suffering from anxiety an analysis undertaken with correct technique by his own father i succeeded in getting a fairly complete picture of the bodily expressions of the impulse and the mental productions of an early stage of childish sexual life and i must remind you that my friend dr c g jung read you a few hours ago in this room an observation on a still younger girl who from the same cause as my patient the birth of a little child in the family betrayed certainly almost the same secret excitement wish and complex creation Accordingly, I am not without hope that you may feel friendly toward this idea of infantile sexuality that was so strange at first.

I might also quote the remarkable example of the Zurich psychiatrist E. Bleuler, who said a few years ago openly that he faced my sexual theories incredulous and bewildered, and since that time by his own observations had substantiated them in their whole scope.

If it is true that most men, medical observers and others, do not want to know anything about the sexual life of the child, the fact is capable of explanation only too easily.

Footnote.

To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler.

End footnote.

ambivalent behavior of the individual to the object or rather to an action regarding it the individual constantly wants to carry out this action the act of touching he sees in it the highest pleasure but he may not carry it out and he even abominates it the opposition between these two streams cannot be easily adjusted because there is no other way to express it they are so localized in the psychic life that they cannot meet the prohibition becomes fully conscious while the surviving pleasure of touching remains unconscious the person knowing nothing about it if this psychological factor did not exist the ambivalence could neither maintain itself so long nor lead to such subsequent

Can you tell us sort of what's in this book?

So yeah, the book really starts with an exploration of the history of autism, going back to Freud, Bleuler, the debates before the 1940s.

Then it moves to look at the minting and the expansion of the diagnosis, especially in America in the 1940s and 50s, and the kind of problems and questions that were seen as central to debates then.

And really the questions that come out of those early debates are still absolutely pertinent today.

Exactly.

These were figures like Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud, and Eugen Bleuler.

They championed introspection, the deep exploration of the mind, and the absolute necessity of empathy.

Luller was the one who coined the term schizophrenia,

He, even to this point about linking it to schizophrenia, he didn't link it just to schizophrenia and felt that and observed that it arose in different illnesses.

And then Kreppelin and Bleuler, who were very important in schizophrenia and who we discussed in that episode, they tied it more to schizophrenia, which certainly there is a linkage there.

And that notion, as I understand it, was... persistent well into the 20th century.

If you look at, I think DSM one through three, they talk about schizophrenia with catatonia, but things have developed since DSM three.

And as we go through this, I imagine I'm going to talk about that concept a lot because I think it's central to the idea of catatonia.

But he did believe it, at least in his early writings, to be part and parcel of schizophrenia.

and Bleuler who disagreed with Kraepelin about a large number of things, agreed with him on this point.

Both of them towards the end of their career sort of suggest in their writings that perhaps that view is incomplete and that catatonia can occur in other mental conditions as well.

Which is distinct, rare, and separate from schizophrenia.

When Eugene Bleuler...

Bleuler?

Bleuler.

Can you tell us sort of what's in this book?

So yeah, the book really starts with an exploration of the history of autism, going back to Freud, Bleuler, the debates before the 1940s.

Then it moves to look at the minting and the expansion of the diagnosis, especially in America in the 1940s and 50s, and the kind of problems and questions that were seen as central to the debates then.

And really, the questions that come out of those early debates are still absolutely pertinent today.