ABSTRACT
The only element of hypnotic therapy Sigmund Freud was going to keep was the prone position of the patient, while he himself remained out of his field of vision. This suited Freud's conception that it is best to give priority to listening for polysemy in language, rather than to suggestion, where the gaze of the other person can hinder free association and the spontaneous resurgence in words of repressed material. The discovery of transference as such is one of the surprising stories that punctuate Freud's relationship with Josef Breuer. In 1914, Freud referred back to the date of a previous address given in the lecture-room of an overseas university. Yet the true circumstances of the birth of psychoanalysis, which Freud had, for a time, attributed to Breuer, remained partly shrouded in mystery. Although Freud considered the cathartic procedure remarkable, he was aware of the shortcomings of any hypnotic treatment controlled by a physician, with its ensuing dependence on the latter.
