Freud’s use and abandonment of hypnosis
Sigmund Freud used hypnosis early, then moved to free association. That career turn is often misread as a scientific refutation of all hypnosis.
Last reviewed 27 August 2026
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) learned hypnosis in the orbit of Charcot, and used it in early clinical work with Josef Breuer (the “talking cure” period). He later dropped formal hypnosis as psychoanalysis took shape.
Key evidence
The usual reasons Freud gives, across his own accounts, are practical and theoretical: not every patient was hypnotisable; he came to prefer a method that did not require a special state; and he wanted material that was not produced only under suggestion. Those are method choices, recorded by a theorist building a new school.
They are not a blinded comparison of hypnosis versus free association for later clinical indications.
Twentieth-century clinicians such as Erickson went the other way and made hypnosis central again: a different tradition, not Freud “winning.”
Limitations
Popular histories flatten this into “Freud proved hypnosis doesn’t work.” He did not run that programme.
What we don't know yet
How Freud’s Viennese cases would look under modern diagnostic labels is speculation.
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