After College

In 1885 Freud went to Paris to study with Europe's most renowned neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot. It was this experience that turned him to a practice of medical psychopathology. Charcot specialised in the study of hysteria and its susceptibility to hypnosis which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Freud later turned away from hypnosis as a potential cure, favouring free association and dream analysis. In 1886 Freud married Martha Bernays, after opening his own little medical practice, specializing in neurology. After experimenting with hypnosis for a little while he found that it was not effective on all of his patients, and instead moved towards talking a patient through his or her problems. His goal was to locate and release powerful emotional energy that had been imprisoned in the unconscious mind.