ABSTRACT
Fundamental to the basics of Sigmund Freud is his legacy of psychoanalytic treatment. Unlike psychiatrists then and now who prescribe medication, produced by drug companies, to relieve symptoms of mental ill-health, Freud sought to relieve his patients of their symptoms by enabling them to become conscious of these symptoms’ repressed and unconscious cause. In addition to the treatment methods of free association and evenly suspended attention, Freud recommended offering patients who applied for psychoanalytic treatment an initial two-week period of treatment to determine whether they would benefit from it. Since Freud’s time, psychoanalytic treatment has been, and continues to be contrasted unfavourably with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which seeks to enable patients to manage their problems by changing their negative thoughts and behaviour. Interestingly, although CBT differs from psychoanalytic treatment it focuses, for instance, more on the present than on the past — the effective ingredients of both forms of treatment are the same.
