Timeline

Sigmund Freud (1856-1949)

Sigmund Freud is the undisputed father of psychoanalysis. Should this statement seem to contradict assertions regarding the age-old status of psychology, it must be clarified that Freud was the first theorist to formalize the process of analysis, a practice that is not used in all modalities of psychology today. Analysis, specifically the psychoanalysis so often parodied in the cartoon of the tormented patient lying on the couch before the bearded quasi-Freudian father figure of the therapist, presupposes in its theoretical structure the existence of an subconscious element to the human mind, in other words, that how humans think they immediately perceive the world is not all that there is to human consciousness.

Freud used techniques such as free association to elicit reasons for his patient's behaviors. Freud began his treatment upon hysterics. He grew to believe that unresolved childhood traumas rather than physiological causes were at...
[ View Full Essay]