Sigmund Freud's Treatment Of Hysteria

Soon after marrying Sigmund and Martha moved into a house and began their family of six over the course of nine years. Out of the six children their youngest daughter Anna would be the only child to follow in her father’s work. As Martha raised their children and kept to the house, Freud continued his medical studies and researched his theories.

As their children grew the development of psychoanalysis began to develop witch would later cause problems in Sigmund’s and Martha’s marriage. Because Martha was raised in a religious family and her grandfather was chief rabbi and followed her family’s religion, she disagreed with Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. With Sigmund being an atheist and Martha believing strongly in her family’s religion it

Treating patients with physical and neurology disorders was his specialty. The majority of his work focused mainly on the causes and treatment of hysteria. Treatment during this time consisted of electric shock and hypnosis, which would be used in his early years of practice.

He soon found hypnosis to be of little help in working with neurotic disorders, so he abandoned both treatments. He began experimenting with a number of methods that would help the patient bring forth memories from the unconscious. After numerous methods he found a technique that worked. The patients would be free to discuss their thoughts wherever it lead them. Sigmund called this technique “free association” which eventually became his main treatment for hysteria. Other physicians in the day discounted dreams but Freud felt that even the dreams of his patients were important. He studied their role in the unconscious and began defining the meaning of dreams. These techniques along with others, helped Freud to create his theories on

The death of Freud’s father affected him greatly. After his father had passed, while he was studying the nature of hysteria, he had imagined his father abusing him and his siblings. The suspicions he had of his father had disappeared when he realized that it was only a figment of his imagination. Because many of his patients had dealt with abusive parents he had begun to imagine his father was abusive as well.

Through self-analysis Freud discovered how his relationship with his parents actually was. He came to realization that his father was not guilty of abusing him along with his siblings and that when he was younger he had wanted to marry his mother. He saw his father as a rival for his mother’s love. Freud found this common to all young boys in various cultures. He called this phenomenal discovery Oedipus complex, which would become one of his most important discoveries. Later he formed the same concept pertaining to girls and their fathers called the Electra