In contrast to his treatment of Freud’s experiences with Brücke and Charcot, Sulloway subjects his association with Josef Breuer to extensive analysis. In fact, it receives more attention than any of Freud’s relationships other than that with Fliess. (By comparison, the Freud-Jung relationship—of such great interest to the traditional biographies—is dispensed with in a brisk four pages.) The reason Breuer figures so prominently in Sulloway’s account is not, however, so readily discernible. Unlike Fliess, Breuer cannot be made to contribute to the central effort of identifying a hidden biological theme in Freud’s intellectual development. There is not a word here about “crypto-biology.” Rather, Breuer serves the more general purpose of revealing, by way of contrast, Freud’s distinctive intellectual style. At the same time, the collaboration between the two men follows a familiar pattern in which Freud first uses and then abuses a chosen friend and accomplice. It thus casts usefully invidious light on Freud’s character. But just as important, Sulloway finds in the orthodox account of the Breuer-Freud relationship an archetypal instance of the mythmaking propensity of the established biographical tradition. Breuer thus becomes “the first major victim of psychoanalytically reconstructed history” (100).

As in his treatment of Charcot, Sulloway considerably dulls the significance of the collaboration with Breuer for Freud’s conversion to an essentially psychological conception of mind. The case histories in their jointly authored Studies on Hysteria (1895) were important above all because they allowed Freud and Breuer to conclude that their patients’ illnesses derived from memories, which had been repressed at the time of the experience only to return, often years later, in the disguised form of symptoms. The theory, in other words, insists on the etiological power of the purely psychological, and it holds that a significant portion of mental life is unconscious. In this respect it was the logical extension of what Freud had learned about the autonomy of the psychological and the importance of the unconscious in his study of hypnotism under Charcot. In the traditional accounts of Freud’s intellectual development, Studies on Hysteria accordingly marks a milestone in his gradual abandonment of the materialist prejudices of his earlier mentors and his embrace of psychoanalysis proper. Indeed, it figures as his first truly psychoanalytic writing.

Not surprisingly, in Sulloway’s account this story is largely repressed. To speak precisely, it is confined to a single sentence. He quotes the famous conclusion from the book that “hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences,”^[5] to which he adds: “This was the fundamental clinical message of Breuer and Freud’s joint theory of hysteria” (61). But Sulloway has nothing more to say about the book’s central and most novel proposition. Instead, he immediately diverts attention by launching into an intricate discussion of the theory’s “psychophysicalist” assumptions concerning the investment and displacement of mental energy. In other words, Sulloway chooses to stress the book’s positivist language rather than its psychological substance: Studies on Hysteria becomes a book not about the persistence and transformation of recollection but about “a ‘short circuit’ in the normal flow of electric fluid” (62). The significance of Studies on Hysteria for the idea of the unconscious is similarly marginalized. The unconscious is demoted to a mere “aspect” of the theory—in fact, the last (and, presumably, least important) aspect. Again, the entire concept is dispensed with in a single sentence: “The last or topographical aspect of the Breuer-Freud theory of hysteria inheres in the hypothesis of an ‘unconscious’ portion of the mind” (64). Why the quotation marks around “unconscious” if not to cast doubt on its reality? Thus does the Freudian revolution end once more with a whimper.

Perhaps predictably, Sulloway’s account focuses as much on the breakup of the Freud-Breuer relationship as on its accomplishments. The dominant biographical tradition, Sulloway argues, has unfairly blamed their ultimate alienation on Breuer’s prudery, in particular on Breuer’s inability to accept Freud’s ideas about the role of sex in the origin of hysteria. Although on the whole Sulloway’s construction is defensible, the evidence is less conclusive than he thinks. Breuer, he shows, agreed with Freud that hysterical symptoms sometimes arise from the repression of a sexual trauma. The disagreement, as one might expect, was over just how often this is the case. Without ever actually saying so, Sulloway gives the impression that Breuer considered it a common occurrence: sexuality for Breuer was “one of the most important factors in hysteria” (79). But this formulation commits Breuer to no particular percentage; even as “one of the most important factors,” sexuality might still figure in less than the majority of cases. What is absolutely certain is that Freud considered sex the essential cause of every hysteria, whereas Breuer found this conclusion unacceptable. The question then becomes, Did Breuer break with Freud because he objected to Freud’s unjustified universalism or, as Freud himself came to believe, because of Breuer’s own resistance to the emphasis on sex?

There can be no simple answer: as already noted, the evidence calls for interpretation. One can reasonably argue that sexual considerations predominated, or that intellectual ones did, or that the two simply complemented each other. But Sulloway allows for no such interpretive ambiguity. For him the answer is obvious: because Breuer had been willing to acknowledge the sexual factor in some cases of hysteria, his real objection to Freud must have been intellectual. “The estrangement between Breuer and Freud was, more than anything else, simply a matter of incompatible scientific styles” (98–99).

Sulloway’s treatment of this matter of antithetical styles is revealing. He introduces the distinction as if it were entirely disinterested. Scientists come in two varieties: the circumspect and the bold, neither one more legitimate than the other. Thus, if Freud practiced a “more visionary style” (86) of science than the careful Breuer, this reflects no discredit on Freud. It merely means that he “feared mediocrity…more than he feared error” (87).

Examined more closely, however, Sulloway’s seemingly neutral distinction turns out to be profoundly invidious. His prose undergoes a rhetorical sea change, by which Breuer’s caution comes to appear decidedly more admirable than Freud’s vision. The effect resembles the return of the repressed, as Sulloway’s latent hostility to Freud eventually overwhelms his manifest (and official) evenhandedness. Thus “the much-misunderstood Josef Breuer” (83) is described as “meticulous” (53), “systematic” (56), “painstaking” and “unassuming” (83), and a physician of “unusual diligence, perspicacity, and extreme patience” (64). Never does Sulloway suggest that Breuer’s caution might at times have become plodding unimaginativeness. By contrast, Freud’s “visionary style” is quickly deconstructed into a series of much less attractive qualities. Unlike Breuer, Freud suffered from “pent-up frustrations and the associated capacity for fanaticism” (83); he sought “rigid and incontrovertible laws” in keeping with his “more dogmatic and revolutionary” image of himself (99); he indulged in “extremist and speculative” hypotheses (86); and he exhibited a “fanatical propensity for exclusive scientific formulation” (99). Bit by bit, the image of Freud as visionary gives way to repeated assertions of his “growing fanaticism” (89). Sulloway himself may pretend to take no sides in the matter of scientific styles, but his language serves to rehabilitate Breuer and discredit Freud.

The purely intellectual difference between Freud and Breuer is underscored by an even more unflattering personal comparison of the two. Breuer, it turns out, was not only careful but nice. He was “generous and even-tempered” (83) and “widely esteemed as an unusually selfless and warm-hearted individual” (54). He even subsidized Freud. Freud, however, was hard and unforgiving. Rather than accept the legitimacy of Breuer’s intellectual reservations, he let his former affection turn to hate:

By 1897, Freud was telling Fliess that the very sight of Breuer would make him want to emigrate, and he even took to avoiding Breuer’s neighborhood for fear of having to meet him on the street. Many years later Breuer’s daughter recalled just such an accidental meeting between the two men when she and her father, now elderly, were out walking one day. Breuer instinctively threw open his arms, while Freud, head down and doing his best to ignore his old friend, marched briskly by.^[6] (99)

Even allowing for a certain amount of dramatic license on the part of Breuer’s daughter, the picture is not an attractive one. We are left with the impression that, characterologically as well as intellectually, it was better to be Josef Breuer than Sigmund Freud.