Psychoanalysis

Initially trained as a neurologist, Freud began working with hysterical and neurotic patients as an outgrowth of his private medical practice beginning around 1883. In 1895, in Studies on Hysteria, co-written with his mentor Josef Breuer, Freud first formulated the theories and method that would later become psychoanalysis. In 1899, after a decade of working with such patients amid ridicule and isolation from the Viennese medical establishment, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, his major work. Though it sold only six hundred copies during the five years following its release, by 1910 Freud had attracted a number of students, mostly physicians, from throughout Europe to the practice of psychoanalysis, and succeeded in establishing the International Psychoanalytic Association. Among the most prominent of these early psychoanalysts were Karl Abraham (1877–1925), Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), Ernest Jones (1879–1958), and Carl Jung (1875–1961). Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Freud, and was for a time his anointed successor to the leadership of the analytic movement, until their relationship dissolved in 1912–1913 over Jung's denial of the centrality of sexuality in neurotic conflict. Jung went on to formulate his own ideas, including the notion of a collective unconscious governed by a universal symbolic order ("arche-types"), as "analytical psychology."

Freud continued to work and publish right up until his death from cancer in September 1939, revising and significantly expanding his theories; increasing numbers of psychoanalysts throughout Europe joined him in this effort. Psychoanalysis continued to flourish, in Europe and the United States, until the outbreak of World War II forced many analysts to flee their homes in Europe. Following the war, analytic institutions continued to expand, and became especially vital in the United States, England, and France.