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The history of the major discoveries in psychoanalysis is largely interwoven with the life

and professional career of a single man, Sigmund Freud.

The book Studies on Hysteria actually marks the beginning of psychoanalysis, although

the term was not used by Freud until a year later (1896). Prior to this time, he spoke of “Breuer’s

cathartic method,” and occasionally of “psychical analysis.” By 1896, Freud had made some

notable changes in the original technique.

For one thing, he had given up the use of hypnosis. He had found that some patients

could not by hypnotized readily, and the results at other times had been disappointing. Secondly,

he had observed that, while hypnosis suspended the patient’s resistance to recalling painful

feelings and memories, the gains were only temporary. Thirdly, he had a temperamental distaste

for the magical connotations that always surrounded the hypnotic state.

Instead he modified the technique, asking the patients simply to report as faithfully and

unreservedly as possible what occurred to them while in his presence. To keep distractions to a

minimum and to insure the greatest possible relaxation, he asked the patient to recline on a

couch, sitting behind him, out of his field of vision. He had also noted that when the patients

diligently followed what came to be known as “the fundamental rule,” their associations

regularly began to turn to personal and troublesome matters, ultimately leading to the core of

their neurotic difficulties. The new method of free association (although the associations were

not “free” in the usual sense) was as simple as it was ingenious. The term psychoanalysis as a

method treatment is inseparable from the technique of free...