ABSTRACT
In 1880 Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician, was experimenting with methods of treating neurotics. He discovered that if he questioned his patients when under hypnosis about their symptoms, these were found to be related to episodes in the patient's past life which gave rise to them. Qualitatively the emotional life of neurotic and normal persons is in many respects alike, there being neither impulses nor ideas in one that are not in the other, and quantitatively they are far more alike than people commonly imagine. The term 'psycho-analysis' was first introduced to indicate a particular kind of treatment of neurotic patients which, although hypnosis was dispensed with, relied on mental means for curing emotional disturbances of the mind. In two issues of The Practitioner some problems connected with psychology in general practice were dealt with.
