THE AMERICAN
Journal of Psychology
Founded by G. Stanley Hall in 1887
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF
PSYCHOANALYSIS[1]
By Prof. Sigmund Freud (Vienna)
First Lecture
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a new and somewhat embarrassing experience for me to appear as lecturer before students of the New World. I assume that I owe this honor to the association of my name with the theme of psychoanalysis, and consequently it is of psychoanalysis that I shall aim to speak. I shall attempt to give you in very brief form an historical survey of the origin and further development of this new method of research and cure.
Granted that it is a merit to have created psychoanalysis, it is not my merit. I was a student, busy with the passing of my last examinations, when another physician of Vienna, Dr. Joseph Breuer,[2] made the first application of this method to the case of an hysterical girl (1880-82). We must now examine the history of this case and its treatment, which can be found in detail in "Studien über Hysterie," later published by Dr. Breuer and myself.[3]
But first one word. I have noticed, with considerable satis-
- ↑ Lectures delivered at the Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the opening of Clark University, Sept., 1909; translated from the German by Harry W. Chase, Fellow in Psychology, Clark University, and revised by Prof. Freud.
- ↑ Dr. Joseph Breuer, born 1842, corresponding member of the "Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften," is known by works on respiration and the physiology of the sense of equilibrium.
- ↑ "Studien über Hysterie," 1895, Deuticke, Vienna. Second edition, 1909. Parts of my contributions to this book have been translated into English by Dr. A. A. Brill, of New York. ("Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, by S. Freud.")
