Sigmund Freud Compare And Contrast Dream Analysis And Hypnosis

Without a doubt one of the most influential psychotherapists of all time, born in Freiberg, Moravia in 1856, Sigmund Freud developed many different theories that are still widely regarded as excellent among the psychological community to this day. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1881 and opened his own practice in 1886. (Breger, Louis 2000) As he began to see patients, Freud developed and used major theories that highly affected his technique of psychotherapy. The following theories that are included in this paper are free association, dream analysis and hypnosis. in order to understand Freud’s method of psychotherapy, it can be viewed in the context of two other prevailing types of therapy at the time. on the one hand there was the
Freud’s idea was as alternative to both previously established forms of treatment for patients and created an analytic style towards his patients. (Zaretsky,Eli 2004)
Freud actually began his work with Hypnotism in 1889 after his methods of electrotherapy no longer seemed to work on his patients effectively. First, Freud began to experiment with hypnosis and put his patients in a trance whereby they would fall asleep, then, while asleep he would tell them that when they regained consciousness they would be cured of their illness. This worked initially and Freud saw decent results, but sometimes the symptoms reappeared. Freud then attempted a new method called the cathartic method, whereby patients would be hypnotized and while in a trance, they would be told to remember and
A German writer by the name of Ludwig Borne was of great importance to Freud because it was in his writing prompts that he challenged his writers tow rite uninterrupted on anything that came to mind, thus Freud often credited Borne as the source of his genius for his theory of free association. (Clark, Ronald 1980) During free association, it is critical imperative that the patient report everything that comes to mind and not have any objections on the grounds that they it be meaningless, for everything in one way or another has significant meaning for the purpose of analysis.Furthermore, another fundamental purpose of the treatment during the free association technique is to bring about the repressed material of the patient. During psychotherapy, it may be typical for the patient to have a significant amount of resistance to bringing about the repressed on information, and so the patient will talk about topics that seem further and further from the repressed idea, the analyst must mention this. Here, it is the the job of the analyst to be an expert interpreter so if the patient’s resistance is light, the repressed information can be inferred, and if the patient’s resistance is high, the patient can be informed so new information can be gather to start a new