Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: psychoanalysis

  • Alfred Adler

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   The understanding of mental illness was barren until Freud’s time, scarcely risen from medieval notions of madness, moral inferiority, and witchcraft. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) began his career in histology and experimental physiology during six years spent in Ernst Brucke’s laboratory. He published a book on aphasia and was director of…

  • Book review: The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic: A story of science, sex and psychoanalysis

    Robert Kaplan Sydney, Australia   Sigmund Freud (lower left, seated) and his “Committee,” including Ernest Jones (far right, standing). Becker & Maass, Berlin. Library of Congress, Marsh Agency/Sigmund Freud Copyrights. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. As a cultural icon of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis has loomed large in the public imagination. What makes it unique is…

  • Wilson on the couch: How Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, an American diplomat, came to analyze the American president

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In December 1966, Houghton Mifflin Company published Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-Eighth President of the United States, A Psychological Study by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt. The curious fact that Sigmund Freud, the…

  • Eugen Bleuler and schizophrenia

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Eugen Bleuler, 1900. from: G. Wehr, Jung, ed. René Coeckelberghs, Collection Les Grands Suisses, ISBN=2-8310-0009-2. Clinique du Burghölzli. Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) (Fig 1) was one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time, best known today for his introduction of the term schizophrenia to…

  • The patient who provided his own placebo and fully recovered

    Lawrence Climo Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States   Photo by Zach Lezniewicz on Unsplash My elderly patient began his treatment by complaining about how his mother had behaved towards him in his boyhood. She had hurt him with her name-calling and humiliating insults, and these had apparently resulted in a lifetime of a negativism towards her. He…

  • Carl Gustav Jung

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Carl Jung. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Creative Commons. In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension,…

  • Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor, (and Bob Dylan)

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Elk Viewing Sleigh Ride – Thunder Bay Resort, Hillman MI. Photo by Joe Ross. Via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0 “Certainly doctors are stupid, or rather, they’re not more stupid than other people but their pretensions are ridiculous; [but] you have to reckon with the fact that they become more and…

  • The use of language in health and illness narratives

    Mariella Scerri Victor Grech  Malta   Portrait of Virginia Woolf in 1902. By George Charles Beresford. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia. “While I was as busy as anyone on the sunny plain of life, I heard of you laid aside in the shadowy recess where our sunshine of hope and joy could never penetrate to you.”…

  • Dr. Sabina Spielrein: Consequences of feminism and love

    Irving Rosen Toronto, Ontario, Canada Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942) as a young woman. She had a hectic existence and can be considered an early contributor to the psychoanalytic literature. Image via Wikimedia  While all our lives are eventful, some people tend to experience situations that set them apart. Born in 1885 in Rostov, Czarist Russia, Sabina…

  • W.H.R. Rivers and the humane treatment of shell shock

    Soleil Shah London, UK   A shell-shocked soldier receives electro-shock treatment from a nurse during the First World War. Image Source: Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine (ref Reeve 041476) via Flickr “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.” – Hippocrates War neurosis, or “shell shock”…