ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis was conceived when Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer discovered that conversion hysteria could be cured if the patient verbalized its traumatic roots; it was born when Freud found a systematic method to elicit the thoughts that had caused the conversion. In essence, the practice of Freudian psychosomatic medicine everywhere depended to a large extent on the whims and beliefs of the psychiatric establishment as well as on the politicians who appointed administrators and allocated the funds for mental health care. Some biographers cite the cocaine experiments as illustrative of Freud's extraordinary talents and curiosity, and some Freudians insist that Freud's biochemical research proved the links between psyche and soma and must continue to remain a legitimate concern of Freudian psychosomatics. In America, the abuses resulting from a rather laissez-faire atmosphere led to the medicalization of psychoanalysis. Although Austrians and Germans had similar institutional experiences in the Third Reich, almost none of the Austrians went into psychosomatics after the war.
