European Yearbook of the History of Psychology

This paper explores a compelling, yet still largely overlooked question in the history of psychology and psychoanalysis: C. G. Jung’s distinctive contribution to the understanding of sexuality and its implications for the development of Jung’s thought and analytical psychology. The paper offers an in-depth historical perspective that elucidates the genealogy of Jung’s reflections around eros, whilst challenging misconceptions and misunderstandings around this theme. The paper first outlines the importance of the myth of eros in Liber Novus (Jung’s “book of visions”, published in 2009) and then sheds light on the relevance of this subject in Jung’s scientific works. The author historically reconstructs the multifaceted transformation of Jung’s thoughts on eros, by drawing on published and unpublished material, tracking some of the most relevant references to this topic in Jung’s oeuvre, and generally inviting to re-assess a little explored but deeply challenging subject.

Throughout the history of psychopathology, there has been a long debate about whether mental disorders should be classified categorically or dimensionally. This issue is particularly evident in the classification of personality disorders. Categorical systems have a long tradition and have been supported by psychiatrists and clinical practitioners. With the development of sophisticated statistical methods, psychologists took over the field and provided studies advocating a dimensional system of personality disorders. Driven by research findings from academic science, the classification system gradually evolved from a categorical approach in form of distinct disorder types in DSM-III (1980), to a “hybrid model” with categorical and dimensional elements in DSM-5 (2013), and most recently to a dimensional system in ICD-11 (2022).

In 1894 Giuseppe Sergi, one of the chief representatives of the late 19^th- and early 20^th-century mind sciences in Italy, published Dolore e piacere – a book outlining a theory of emotions that attempted to define their origin, nature, development, and anatomical loci. In Sergi’s own words, the book represented an advancement in the discussion (begun some years earlier by William James and Carl Lange) on the peripheral theory of emotions. James’ response to Sergi’s study was quite harsh: in 1895, he published a review of Sergi’s book that emphasized its outdatedness and the superficiality of the theory it introduced. This paper offers a detailed analysis of Sergi’s theory of emotions – which has not yet received significant attention by scholars – evaluating it in the light of James’ critical remarks.

The similarities and differences in the theories of two linguistically trained Hungarian psychoanalysts, Tivadar Thass-Thienemann and Iván Fónagy are presented in this paper. Both men received formal training in Hungary and later emigrated to other countries. Thass-Thienemann of Ungarndeutsch (German-Hungarian) was of Germanist descent with training in classical philology. His interest in psychoanalysis developed extensively after he emigrated from Hungary. Fónagy, on the other hand, was a trained psychoanalyst and a structural linguist, active in both domains while still in Hungary. Both became interested in a psychoanalytic interpretation of language. Thass-Thienemann was particularly interested in etymology, the history of meaning and the process of symbolization. He sought to apply a theory which incorporated sexual motivations in a holistic examination of the lexicon. Fónagy was a committed structuralist, combining Saussure and the Prague School. He attempted to demonstrate the presence of emotional motivations throughout the entirety of the language system. These motivations, he argued, were present at the level of phonetic articulation, lexical, semantic, and syntactic choices. The term double encoding is used by Fónagy to account for this unconscious motivation. Propositional content, the descriptive function of language (the first coding), is always accompanied by the expressive function, a second coding, that is, a second articulation. Comparing the two approaches, Thass-Thienemann shows a preference for a combination of an associative language model with psychoanalytic symbolization, while Fónagy’s is a structural psychoanalytic approach to the use, structure, and origin of language.

In his Fulmine contro de’ medici putatitii rationali (1592), Tommaso Zefiriele Bovio (1521-1609), a practising physician from Verona, considered mainly by historians to be an epigone of Paracelsus, reports having cured a merchant grievously troubled with epilepsy. The therapy consisted of three parts: first, the administration of herbal infusions and hellebore pills; then the chewing of a human skullcap with musk and sugar; and finally, the so-called nail of the great beast to be hung around the neck and ringed on the sick person’s finger. The use of animal and human scraps as an officinal remedy against disease and as an amulet against adversity, especially mental illness, has its roots in antiquity. Such treatments, which dragged on within the popular culture and deposited with alchemical medicine, reached their exploits in the early modern age. Especially in the season of Paracelsian iatrochemistry, how-to books abounded with drugs made from blood, bones and mummies. The seventeenth-century friar Francesco Sirena from Pavia reported recipes using human blood for treating falling sickness. However, not only the parts and secretions extracted from living bodies constitute remedies. Corpses, too, represent an excellent pharmacy from which to obtain supplies for cures of all kinds. Why was cadaveric medicine so successful in early modern northern Italy? The key study of Tommaso Zefiriele Bovio may shed new light and help us to understand how much treatment of epilepsy depends on particular cosmological and anthropological conceptions. Finally, a study of this kind could provide one more element to explore the debated Bovio-Paracelsus relationship, trying to give an initial answer as to whether it is permissible to consider Bovio as a Paracelsian follower and to clarify how much and in what way the Swiss physician’s ideas circulated in the north of the Italian Peninsula.

In 1760, Charles Bonnet (1720–1793), a Genevan naturalist and philosopher, published a landmark work on psychology entitled “Analytical Essay on the Faculties of the Soul”. Bonnet returned to the book’s contents many times as he was dissatisfied with his treatment of memory and recognition. This article presents Bonnet’s ideas on memory as described in his famous 1760 book. His dissatisfaction with his own solutions regarding the mechanism of recognition, and criticisms from other philosophers regarding his writings on memory, led him to produce a short work on recognition in 1786–1787. The original French manuscript was entitled “Sur la Réminiscence”. Bonnet was the first philosopher to introduce the problem of recognition into the field of philosophical studies and to recognize its great interest for psychology. The 1786 manuscript, with its English translation, is included in this volume in the section on documents and archival material. Bonnet’s text, due to its importance and the depth of its subject matter, must be considered as the most accomplished philosophical text on memory of its time. Moreover, it remains an invaluable source of reflection for contemporary researchers since we still lack certainty about the structure and functioning of human memory.

The identity problems of psychotherapy, which are in themselves a fundamental difficulty in writing a history of it, are described. Each definition of psychotherapy affects how to construct a historiography of it.

This paper explores the transference of psychotherapeutic practices and conceptions across geographical locations, particularly in the context of mass migration. It argues that migration was a critical factor in the expansion of psychotherapy, but that the transfer of practices and conceptions was not a straightforward process. Rather, it involved the transfer of local modes of practice and accompanying conceptions across particular trade routes, which in turn reshaped the geographical destinations.

This paper claims the efforts made by the Alliance of Intellectuals of Chile for the Defense of Culture and the Medical Society of Valparaíso in offering Sigmund Freud political asylum in Chile. These groups, led by Pablo Neruda and Juan Marín, respectively, formed an anti-fascist intellectual bloc that publicly condemned the harassment the founding father of psychoanalysis suffered in Vienna in 1938. This article explores the general background of this episode. It attempts to uncover the motivations behind this political gesture within the context of the role of intellectuals and their new self-representations. Finally, this paper explores the positive expectations that Chilean society had towards psychoanalysis and its transformative capacity.

Marie Langer (1910–1987) was an Austrian-born psychoanalyst who died in Argentina, after collaborating with the Spanish Republic in the 1930s and the Nicaraguan Revolution in the 1980s. Having escaped the Anschluss, in Buenos Aires, she was among the founding members of the first psychoanalytic association in the Spanish-speaking world, in the 1940s. Her first articles showed an early interest for “women’s issues”. Her famous book, Maternidad y sexo [Motherhood and sexuality] (1951) combined innovative aspects with conservative elements. In an original way, Langer made use of ideas from Helene Deutsch, Melanie Klein and Karen Horney, who questioned Freud’s theories about women’s sexual development. Langer’s activism to wed psychoanalysis with social change corresponds to the last two decades of her life, and will be dealt with in the second article of the two dedicated to her.

Ernst Bernhard, the first analytic psychologist in Italy, was a sui generis student of Jung and became the leader of Italian analytic psychology almost in spite of himself. His story is indicative of a period dense with complex choices and paradoxical fates for psychotherapists of Jewish descent forced into exile. After the advent of Nazism, Bernhard tried in vain to move to Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Italy was a third choice. Here he initially seemed to be able to begin a fruitful exchange with fellow Freudian analysts, but racial laws forced him to stop his work. During the war he was forced first into confinement, then into hiding. In the second half of the 1940s, however, he was able to undertake an intense activity as an analyst, popularizer and trainer.