The lsserlin affair. A proxy dispute between Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin


Studienarbeit, 2021

74 Seiten


Leseprobe


Table of Contents

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents

Introduction

Beginning of the dispute

at the historic 37th hiking meeting of south-west German insane doctors (Irrenärzte) in Tübingen

C. G. Jung’s “Psychologie der Dementia praecox” (Psychology of dementia praecox) and the criti- cism of it on a scientific evening in Kraepelin’s

Max Isserlin’s Critique of Freud

There are also personal reasons for the dispute

The conflict is widening the Isserlin affair takes hold

Kraepelin visits Bleuler (1910 in Zurich)

Bleuler separates from Freud, Jung also separates from Freud

The aftermath of the Isserlin affair

Conclusion

Zusammenfassung
Die lsserlin-Affäre

References

Max Isserlin’s life and work

Introduction

Medical student and Kantian in Königsberg

Max Isserlin‘s turn to psychiatry in 1903

One year later,

Postdoctoral lecture qualification 1910

Interim between postdoctoral thesis and First World War

Sickbay experiences during the First World War

Heckscher and Max Isserlin

Exkursion about Heckscher father and son

August Heckscher

Max Isserlin’s Emigration and End

Summary

Zusammenfassung

References

The author

Introduction

Kraepelin and Freud never entered into a direct dispute with each other, although both of them, each for themselves and above all because of their contradictions, were the leading figures in German psychiatry in the 20th century, as has been shown elsewhere 1. It is true that each of them has occasionally woven a rough swipe at the other in published texts (Freud GW VI, 8 2, Kraepelin 3, 239 3). But it stayed that way. On the other hand, there is a passionate dispute between C. G. Jung and Max Isserlin, in which Freud and Kraepelin themselves as well as Bleuler intervened from the background. Jung coined the term Max Isserlin affair for this dispute. It plays an important role in the international psychoanalytic literature, but mostly only in the form of obscure historical notes. It is evidently shown here for the first time in context.

C. G. Jung does not need to be specially introduced as a person. We have reported in more detail about Max Isserlin, who was forgotten due to his forced emigration, in a separate manuscript 4.

Beginning of the dispute

at the historic 37th hiking meeting of south-west German insane doctors (Irrenärzte) in Tübingen

1906 was the time of particularly lively discussions about psychoanalysis, which had only become known to a broader psychiatric public in the previous years. Jung and Max Isserlin faced each other for the first time at what has since become a historically significant conference.

At this conference, one historically significant event immediately followed another. One can speak of the “37. Assembly of Südwestdeutscher Irrenärzte” in Tübingen on November 3rd and 4th, 1906. On this day, Alois Alzheimer gave a lecture for the first time on what Kraepelin later called Alzheimer‘s disease [5, 6] and today an internationally recognized and well-known dis- ease. Although Alzheimer clearly described the clinical picture and the anatomical findings in his lecture and also clearly recognized the significance of the clinical vignette, the official protocol notes “No discussion” 7. What immediately followed in the program immediately attracted much more attention and discussion, because the Max Isserlin affair began.

Immediately after Alzheimer‘s disease, two Swiss psychiatrists, Ludwig Frank and Dumeng Bezzola, spoke „ Über die Analyse psychotraumatischer Symptome“ ( About the analysis of psychotraumatic symptoms) 8. The two speakers were members of Bleuler‘s group of co-workers, but were not psychoanalysts and later stayed away from psychoanalysis 9. However, they presented to the congregation in abbreviated form a few psychoanalyzed cases that, if you read them again now, did not really offer anything special. In their lecture, Frank and Bezzola regretted

„the reproduction of a case as it results from psychoanalysis, would exceed the allotted speaking time above all, this sparked a lively discussion. This was first dominated by Alfred Hoche 10:

“The gentlemen presenters may have the impression that a lack of time prevented them from developing their evidence to the full; I think I can say that even with full freedom in this respect they would not have succeeded in convincing the majority of those present.“

This somewhat objective criticism was followed by a lively debate as be- came later very well known

Anyone who reads the Freudian, fragments of a hysteria analysis1 ’at ease, will only put them down with a shake of the head; For my part, I have to admit that I have no idea how anyone can take the ideas put forward there seriously;

I understand it even less when we - those who reject them - are accused of not being able to have a say as long as we have not also used this ‚method‘.

There is also a hint that there could be no question of ‚moral indignation‘ against the “Freudian constellations“. At the end of the contribution to the discussion follows Hoche‘s important high-level statement

„In the meantime we want to protest against the fact that we should be backward or malicious because we don‘t want to go along with what we consider a fashion, namely a bad one, which, incidentally, is full of dangers of all kinds for the medical profession“.

The psychiatrist, who was later to lay the spiritual foundations for the Holocaust in the mentally ill 11 and at this point already had this opinion, as he himself later confessed 12, saw psychoanalysis as the greater danger for the mentally ill. So it was a moral objection alluding to sexuality.

Following Hoche, C. G. Jung spoke first to defend the two people from Zurich. At the same time, Jung defended Freud, who was attacked by Hoche. Max Isserlin then intervened in the discussion from the other side against

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

1

psychoanalysis. This dispute is to be reproduced here in the wording after the minutes.

C. G. Jung:

Freud‘s theory of hysteria must not simply be rejected as nonsense. Sexuality plays a huge role everywhere. It is therefore not impossible that many cases of hysteria can be reduced to sexual trauma. Without having applied psychoanalysis, one cannot claim that Freud is fundamentally wrong. Nor can one simply declare the psychoanalytic method unsuitable; that has to be proven first.

Max Isserlin:

Checks in the form of association experiments according to Jung‘s method showed that the reaction time-lengthening influence of emotional ideas (complexes) exists, but that no data could be found for a standardization of these complexes in the sense of Freud‘s theory (sexual trauma). On the contrary, the emotional character of manifold ideas was demonstrable, as it corresponds to the emotionality of the hysterical character. Jung‘s assertion that emotional complex associations in particular are most easily forgotten - an assertion which was interpreted in the sense of Freud‘s theory of repression - was not confirmed by I[sserlin].

A little later, C. G. Jung replied again to Max Isserlin‘s objection:

Max Isserlin himself states that the associations betray emotional constellations. I have never claimed that the false reproductions only affect the complex sites.

In his comment, Max Isserlin referred to studies that he later mentioned in his habilitation application:

Max Isserlin:

I also carried out studies on a large amount of material from psychopaths and hysterics (partly from the Erbs Department) to test the Freud-Jungian hypothesis of psychoneuroses; the experiments have not yet been extensively published, but their most essential results have been reported. 13.

In fact, they were never published as intended, but were included in a paper to be discussed below.

C. G. Jung reported on this discussion in a letter to Freud on November 26, 1906, three weeks later:

Incidentally, I also carried out your case at the meeting of insane doctors in Tubingen against an overwhelming opposition, among

Geheimrat Hoche in particular stood out for the stupidity of the arguments.

According to the minutes, however, apart from Hoche and Max Isserlin, no one spoke critically. “overwhelming opposition” is therefore more likely to express the emotional value of the discussion. In Jung’s letter to Freud, apart from Hoche, only Frank and Bezzola are mentioned, the latter with great praise. On the other hand, Jung does not mention the name Max Isserlins 14.

Max Isserlin is initially reluctant to speak publicly. He is namely speaker for all lectures at this conference for the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie. This report 15 has so far been ignored by the historical literature. Max Isserlin had already been Kraepelin’s co-worker in Heidelberg, but only finally came to Kraepelin a month after the Tübingen conference, where he also became con-assistant to Alzheimer’s. Max Isserlin’s conference report is apparently based on his own notes that he made during the conference, not on his own contributions, like the official report.

Max Isserlin first gives a very brief account of the first Alzheimer’s case. In contrast to Alzheimer’s own lecture title “Ueber eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Hirnrinde“ (About a peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex), the heading in Max Isserlin’s report already signals something special:

Privatdozent Dr. Alzheimer-Munich reported on a peculiar mental illness with very unusual anatomical findings.

This is followed by an emphatically factual presentation on the lectures by Frank and Bezzola. This in turn is followed by a more detailed rendering of the discussion.

In the very lively discussion, Hoche-Freiburg initially took a very decisive position against the teachings of Freud and his followers, which he considered completely wrong and one-sided. Jung-Burghölzli tries to support Freud‘s teachings with the results of his Jung’s association test by pointing out that the complex phenomena he ascertained in the associations of hysterical people go back to a unified psychological experience (etiological trauma).

In contrast, Max Isserlin-Heidelberg reports on attempts to associate with hysterical people. He, too, was able to demonstrate the in- fluence of emotional ideas (complexes) which prolong the reaction time. In contrast to Jung, however, he found that these phenomena do not always come together in the sense of a uniform etiological experience, that rather diverse emotive ideas with their characteristic effects come to light in the association test. I. [Max Isserlin] interprets this fact in the sense of the well-known emotiveness of the hysterical. Even the phenomenon found by Jung that associations associated with emotional complexes are most easily forgotten (a fact which Jung interpreted in terms of Freud‘s theory of repression) was not confirmed by Max Isserlin.

Gaupp-Tübingen tries to mediate between the extreme views.

On the whole, this is a factual report that does not reveal any emotional charge in Max Isserlin. At the same time, it becomes clear that he is very attracted to this problem, but seeks explanations in what is already known.

C. G. Jung’s “Psychologie der Dementia praecox” (Psychology of dementia praecox) and the criti- cism of it on a scientific evening in Kraepelin’s

department

The following year, 1907, Jung‘s first book was published in Halle C. G. Jung. It has been reissued over and over again in many languages up to the present day. The title Psychology of Dementia praecox 16 today would be more like “Psychodynamics of Schizophrenia”. Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia shortly afterwards 17, certainly not uninfluenced by this book by his then colleague Jung. Since Jung‘s foreword to the book is dated “in July 1906”, the manuscript was thus already completed when the cited discussion took place in Tübingen in November 1906. That, too, may explain the vehemence of Jung‘s reaction. Kraepelin could feel provoked simply because the (suspected brain disease) dementia praecox he had just described a few years earlier was associated with psychology in its title.

Obviously Max Isserlin read the book as soon as it was published, because he presented the content to a „scientific evening“ in the Munich psychiatric clinic under Kraepelin‘s direction. Since Max Isserlin‘s paper was published, its content is known 18. After a precise and factual content report and an objectively justified criticism, derogatory and polemical sections follow, which he himself called an „absolute negation“.

I do not doubt that I will be hit by the club that has hitherto been waged by his supporters against all of Freud’s opponents, namely the accusation that the critic does not control Freud’s procedure. It is a sign of uncertainty about general scientific principles that this objection could be raised again and again. [...] Believe who likes it! The reader who is not used to Freudian views ’must be sorry for the diligence and ingenuity that Jung wasted on this Sisyphean work.”

In the end, however, Max Isserlin’s pen slips a remarkable confession:

For the rest, I can only make the word of a well-known physiologist mean that it is more creditable and more useful for the progress of truth to be the last to recognize a new truth as a result of one’s scepticism than to be the first to recognize a new truth as a result of one’s lack of criticism a new mistake can be fooled.

One recognizes from this, as incidentally from the whole text, that Max Isserlin was deeply fascinated by Jung‘s book, but still believed he had to reject it because, as an avowed Kantian, he considers the „natural“ scientific truth to be the only possible 19. Max Isserlin received a great deal of sup- port for his criticism from contemporary scholars 20. However, through his criticism, he has probably blocked access to a way of thinking that actually attracted him very much. In any case, the further historical development did not confirm Max Isserlin‘s spontaneous criticism. Jung‘s book has received a lot of attention right up to the present day, but Max Isserlin‘s “absolute negation” has been forgotten.

Jung, however, felt deeply hurt by this criticism of the Kraepelin employee, who was hardly known until then. It is true that Jung initially attempted to disregard the ironic remark that Max Isserlin had «killed» him in a letter to the «esteemed Professor» Freud on May 13, 1907. But apparently the expression «killed» reflects exactly what Jung felt. In his answer, Freud also speaks in a strange way of a “bullet” from Max Isserlin (Freud to Jung, May 26, 1907).

Max Isserlin›s criticism itself did not have to come as a surprise. It was presented from the Kantian and scientific point of view and has been brought forward again and again against psychoanalysis in the same way. As a Königsberg student, Max Isserlin was influenced early by the philosophy of Kantian idealism and in an early work 21 he expressed himself polemically in the same sense, albeit in a different thematic context:

The intoxication of Schelling-Hegel’s natural philosophy had vanished like smoke and mirrors and, after all the metaphysical excesses, had left behind a considerable depression.

An acceptance of psychoanalysis could not grow on such philosophical grounds; Max Isserlin’s criticism, which was repeatedly expressed, devel- oped on this ground and can be briefly summarized.

Max Isserlin’s Critique of Freud

1910 Max Isserlin, in a work that is entirely devoted to Freudian psychoanalysis, acknowledges and recognizes future developments:

The draft of [Freud’s] teachings is of such a peculiarity, the methodology which supports it, of such novelty that a very far-reaching trans- formation of our psychopathological conceptions would undoubtedly have to take place if the views presented were to prove themselves 22.

There is definitely fascination in this formulation. Freud read this passage and wrote about it with irony to Jung on April 12, 1910:

Max Isserlin seems to be approaching lucid moments (Freud to Jung on April 12, 1910).

The mentally ill have lucida intervalla (light moments) that is the tertium comparationis. On the same day Freud wrote to Ferenczi:

Max Isserlin’s criticism already sounds much more well-mannered, the case may not be entirely hopeless. Non-treatment seems to me to be the best technique (23, p. 241).

Following this remark, which was so enthusiastically received, Max Isserlin turned all his acuteness to the proof that Freud’s “views” did not prove themselves. Initially, his criticism appears in a packaging that expresses fascination and rejection at the same time:

One will certainly not escape the impression of these ideas; one will be able to admire the peculiar greatness which is contained in Freud’s views - despite the accessories that all too often distort them - and would perhaps be able to calm down with this impression, if Freud nothing would have wanted to give but thoughts of a generally psychological nature or ideas as the basis of a world-view.

Then he turns against the use of evidence in psychoanalytic interpretations, which Max Isserlin calls “discretion”. The tone becomes increasingly sharper:

All connections that he [Freud] makes between symptoms and facts that are supposed to be aetiological are purely hypothetical of his own free will.

Ferenczi responded to Max Isserlin’s criticism five days later in his reply to Freud, in which he wrote:

“Max Isserlin’s criticism made a great impression here. The ignorant opponents are once again happy to be through with us. And yet there is absolutely nothing new and significant in the Critique; He wants ‘evidence’ - and does not look for it where it can only be found in analytical practice. These people always forget that the PsA is not a hypothesis, but a sum of empirical experiences that are brought into a thought context ”(Ferenczi to Freud on April 17, 1910 23).

It is also quite interesting that in 1980 the word “neurosis” was completely eliminated from the vocabulary of DSM III with exactly this line of argument 24. Finally, Max Isserlin sums it up sharply:

Freud’s psychoanalytic method is [.] Scientifically not justified and its claims untenable. All assertions based on them of the proof of certain mechanisms (repression, determination) must be regarded as unproven with this methodology and in some cases also unprovable. Jung’s assertion that it is possible with the Freudian method to re- construct the entire psychic constellation from every psychic particle appears to be an uncanny error. He hoped to have shown again how poor, contradicting and unsubstantiated this so-called ‘observation- al method’ is. He emphasizes “that this metapsychology represents a relapse into pre-scientific levels of understanding, [.]

That we find in the whole a mythological consideration of mental phenomena, not an empirically scientific psychology” 22.

This, too, is an argument that is still being repeated in the present. Krae- pelin undoubtedly identified himself with this criticism, which was initially presented orally in the clinic, and which he would otherwise certainly not have permitted publication.

In itself, Max Isserlin’s criticism is true if one makes the premise that any philosophy other than rationalistic philosophy should not be allowed and that everything that cannot be grasped with rational-scientific methods must remain out of consideration, is true. But only then. The historical development has taken a different path. Freud’s ideas have decisively changed the conception of human nature, while Max Isserlin’s criticism first has to be brought back to mind with these lines. Nevertheless, Max Isserlin’s criticism has not become out of date.

There are also personal reasons for the dispute

There may well have been a more personal reason for the sharpness of Max Isserlin’s criticism of Jung. Max Isserlin had worked with Robert Sommer in Giessen and soon afterwards in Heidelberg also with association experiments. It was not C. G. Jung, but Robert Sommer who was the first to give a more detailed description of the methods and possibilities of association experiments in 1899 25. When Max Isserlin joined the Giessen clinic as an assistant in 1904, attempts at association were just becoming a fashionable method of investigation. Already in the first months Max Isserlin experimented with association experiments with an epileptic 26, obviously at the same time as Jung in Zurich was also doing such experiments with an epileptic 27.

Max Isserlin’s work and its publication, however, was interrupted by an illness with tuberculosis, which is why he had to go to a longer medical facility treatment.

The conflict is widening the Isserlin affair takes hold

Three years later, the discussion that has been resumed is by no means objective. In 1910, in the months before Max Isserlin’s habilitation, the Max Isserlin affair emerged. The expression comes from Jung himself. From a letter from Jung to Freud of March 2, 1910, it emerges that Max Isserlin had written to Jung asking whether he would be attending the planned Second International Psychoanalytic Congress on March 30 and 31 should take place in Nuremberg in 1910, was allowed to participate. Jung flatly refused this request. Max Isserlin then asked Jung whether he might at least participate as a “silent listener”, i.e. without a lecture and without intervening in the discussion, “which, however, was [also] very convincingly rejected” (Emma Jung to Freud, March 8, 1910). The Jung-Max Isserlin correspondence on this has unfortunately not yet been published and the wording is therefore not known.

[...]


1 1. Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse, 1905: GW 1942, 5, 163-286. - Fragment of an analy- sis of a case of hysteria. SE 7 : 7-122.

Ende der Leseprobe aus 74 Seiten

Details

Titel
The lsserlin affair. A proxy dispute between Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin
Autor
Jahr
2021
Seiten
74
Katalognummer
V1038700
ISBN (eBook)
9783346461353
ISBN (Buch)
9783346461360
Sprache
Deutsch
Schlagworte
sigmund, freud, emil, kraepelin
Arbeit zitieren
Prof. Dr. med. Dr. h.c. Uwe H. Peters (Autor:in), 2021, The lsserlin affair. A proxy dispute between Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1038700

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