Sigmund Freud And Hypnosis

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May, 1856 in the Czech Republic. He grew up in Austria with his Jewish family, and lived there for almost his entire life. He married his wife Martha in 1886 and together had six children, one of his daughters, Anna, went on to become a psychoanalyst. Freud is best known for being a psychologist, but was also a medical doctor, and had his own practice in Vienna until he fled Austria in 1938 to escape the Nazis.

From 1876 to 1882, working as an assistant with Ernst Wilhelm Ritter von Brücke, neurology was Freud’s main focus. Four years later he opened up his first neurologist's office, and Freud practiced and observed hypnosis as a clinical technique, and began to formulate the beginnings of his theory of the mind.

Freud then tried hypnosis with his patients, but found that the effects did not last. His colleague and friend Josef Breuer, suggested that he try talking with his hysterical patients. He encouraged a hysterical patient to talk uninhibitedly about the earliest occurrences of the symptoms, and found that their symptoms were caused by traumatic experiences which they had suppressed. The treatment allowed the patient to recall the experience of consciousness, to confront it in a deep way both intellectually and emotionally. “This technique, and the theory from which it is derived, was given its classical expression in Studies in Hysteria, jointly published by Freud and Breuer in 1895.” (Thornton). Shortly after Breuer could not agree with Freud, Freud believed that sexual origins and neuroses was more important, so they parted ways. “It’s ironic to note that many of Freud’s ideas revolved around sex; however, he himself had grown not to like sex and at the age of forty- one vowed a life of celibacy” (Husman). Freud hypothesized that from infancy to adolescence, we form our sexual feelings by the different stages in childhood development, and our relationships with our

Using Freud’s theories, it has served as a spark to many professionals in the field of psychology and prompted them to see connections that they otherwise would have missed. Psychoanalysis enlightened health professionals about many aspects of the human mind and its inner workings, phenomena that had previously been unexplainable. As a result of psychoanalysis, approaches to psychological treatment now considered routine or commonplace were developed worldwide. Psychoanalysis can also be used to describe or explain a vast array of other concepts outside of the realm of the psychological field. “religion, Shakespeare's character "Hamlet," the nature of companies and their leaders, or an artist's paintings can all be explained by the principles of psychoanalysis.” (Beystehner). This comprehensiveness suggests that the theory of psychoanalysis is, at least to some extent, pointing in the general direction of the