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FIVE
LECTURES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
But I soon came
to dislike hypnosis, for it was a temperamental and, one
might almost say, a mystical ally. When I found that,
in spite of all my efforts, I could not succeed in bringing
more than a fraction of my patients into a hypnotic state,
I determined to give up hypnosis and to make the cathartic
procedure independent of it. Since I was not able at will
to alter the mental state of the majority of my patients,
I set about working with them in their normal state.
Sigmund Freud, 1921
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| Hypnosis was considered an altered state that Freud had difficulty
inducing. He came to depend on free association, asking
patients to say whatever came into their heads, rather than
on the hypnotic powers of suggestion. |
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| Getting patients to experience the effect, or emotion, connected
to a traumatic memory was the key to what Breuer and Freud
called the cathartic method of treatment. |
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Library of Congress
