The history of the psychoanalytic movement

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"The history of the psychoanalytic movement" by Sigmund Freud is a historical account written in the early 20th century. It charts the birth and growth of psychoanalysis, outlines its core ideas and methods, and narrates its spread, institutionalization, and conflicts—especially Freud’s defenses of the theory against critics and former allies. The opening of the work presents Freud’s own role in creating psychoanalysis, acknowledging Breuer’s “cathartic method” while marking his departures—free association, the centrality of resistance and transference, and the theory of repression. He recounts how he moved from hypnosis to analysis, from a discarded “seduction theory” to infantile sexuality and psychic reality, and how dream interpretation became his anchor during years of isolation. The narrative then widens to the formation of the early Vienna circle, the crucial alliance with the Zürich clinic (Bleuler, Jung), and the international spread to America with supportive figures like Putnam, Brill, and Jones. Freud sketches the founding of journals and societies and the extension of analytic thinking to myth, literature, and religion. He explains his avoidance of polemics, yet describes organizing the International Psychoanalytic Association and the early congresses. This opening section culminates in the first major schism, detailing Adler’s break and “Individual Psychology,” which Freud criticizes for rejecting repression and sexual motivation, and it foreshadows a second rupture to come.