Practicing mind‐body medicine before Freud: John G. Gehring, the “Wizard of the Androscoggin”

Abstract

This article describes the psychotherapy practice of physician John G. Gehring and places it in historical context. Forgotten today, Gehring was a highly soughtafter therapist from the 1890s to the 1920s by prominent figures in the arts, sciences, business, and law. He practiced a combination of work therapy, suggestion, and autosuggestion that has similarities to Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Behavioral Activation. Using biographies, memoirs, and archival records, the details of Gehring's work are reconstructed and the reasons for its success are analyzed. His invisibility in the history of psychiatry is attributed to the later dominance of Freudianism within the field.In the history of psychotherapy, 1909 was a momentous year. Most famously it was the year that Sigmund Freud came to America, an event commemorated a century later by competing conferences at Clark University and the New York Academy of Medicine (Burnham, 2012). Contrary to Freud-centric histories, however, Freud's visit was a minor event to theorists and practitioners in the field of psychotherapy. As Sonu Shamdasani explained in 2009, more prominent than Freud were a group of Europeans and North Americans that included Pierre Janet, Hugo Munsterberg, Paul Dubois, and Morton Prince. 1 To them, the most significant event of 1909 was a symposium at Yale University during a meeting of the American Therapeutic Society. It featured papers on the current state of psychotherapy, with some notes on the new Freudian techniques.Those methods might have an effect, Boris Sidis noted, but they were caused by factors that the Freudians failed to fully understand (Shamdasani, 2012).His audience was a group of equally prominent MD's, who Prudden said were already familiar with Gehring's achievements and reputation as a therapist. They knew "of the remarkable success of [Gehring] in… converting derelict human hulks into manageable and useful craft; and in inspiring lasting courage and cheer in the… despondent and the cheerless" (Prudden, 1909, p. 7). What they did not know, he said, were the methods employed.As Prudden explained in detail, Gehring gave each patient a physical exam, medications as needed, and a daily routine. Much of the day was spent outdoors, gardening, chopping and splitting wood, tennis and quoits in the summer, snowshoeing and sledding in the winter. To this healthful "environment and regime" (Prudden, 1909, p. 15), Gehring added suggestion, the part of the therapy that Prudden deemed particularly noteworthy. Rather than hypnotize a patient, Gehring first deployed his sympathetic listening, cheerfulness, and alertness to each of his patient's condition. Winning their confidence, he instructed their subconscious to control insomnia and various psychosomatic problems. He also used autosuggestion, which he believed the patients already employed to make themselves ill and were taught to use properly-to control themselves and develop healthier habits and thinking.In closing his talk, Prudden said he was not trying to drum up business for his...