ABSTRACT
Joseph Breuer's and Sigmund Freud's method of treating the ancient medical syndrome of hysteria stands out as a turning point in the long history of attempts to understand human psychology. Freud as the father of psychoanalysis it is more useful and more accurate to see Freud as the first, and most important, theoretician of the analytic hour. Freud chose to present a case of Charcot's that demonstrated that hysteria could be found in men as well as in women with very little difference in symptomatology. Breuer and Freud were part of an international community of mental health workers dealing with a range of obscure mental states of which hysteria was the most famous. Contemporaries of Freud and Breuer clearly recognized that their Studies on Hysteria were different from other approaches to hysteria. Freud's contribution of the analytic hour their exploration had been no more than guesswork.
