The psychoanalytic therapy was derived from the treatment of hysterical patients with hypnosis. Freud first became interested in this method under the influence of his friend Josef Breuer.

The discovering of free association may well be considered the beginning of analytic therapy when Freud used it with Elisabeth Von R., who was refractory to hypnosis.

In the “Studies of Hysteria“. published with Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud described the cornerstone of the psychoanalytic theory : resistance, transference, repression, and defence mechanisms.

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(Edited by María Moya Guirao, M.D.)