Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) lived in an era rich with groundbreaking scientific discoveries in physics, biology, and medicine. He studied medicine with the goal of being a scientist and doing research, not of seeing patients, and as a medical student he performed laboratory research on the nervous system. For financial reasons Freud was forced to practice medicine and see patients, and because of his research background he began specializing in the treatment of nervous disorders or psychological problems. To improve his treatment skills he studied with the famous French psychiatrist Jean Charcot who was using hypnosis as a treatment method. But Freud felt hypnosis did not provide long term cures, and it did not get to the sources of his patients' problems. Next, Freud tried a method being used by Joseph Breuer, a Viennese physician, whereby patients' symptoms were cured by talking about them. It was through using the "talking cure" with his own modifications and revisions to it that Freud formed his theories of personality and psychoanalytic therapy.