Colleagues of Freud
Who were the colleagues of Freud? Though we know a lot about the father of psychoanalysis, we hardly ever hear about those that may have influenced his work.
Any other doctor that knew Freud personally can be considered one of the colleagues of Freud. Taking that definition into consideration, one of his contemporaries was Carl Jung. Now, Jung began as Freud’s pupil, but as time went on Jung developed his own theories that placed him right next to the analyst as an equal. Another one of his equals was the great Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, though Charcot is hardly mentioned today. Both colleagues of Freud were equally important to his overall development.
As Freud was to Jung, Charcot was to Freud – that is to say that Jean-Martin Charcot was the first doctor that he ever studied underneath. In fact, Charcot greatly impacted him to the extent that Freud really began his work with the subconscious based upon some of Charcot’s failures. Likewise, Jung based many of his own theories upon his teacher’s ideas, though Jung often branched off in completely different directions. It’s interesting to think of the ways in which these teachers and pupils impacted each other’s lives, though hardly any of them would have thought that we’d still be studying their techniques today.
During the time that the colleagues of Freud existed, psychology was a relatively new thing. Prior to these great minds, humans and their emotions were left to fend for themselves. If a person suffered from hysteria or neurosis before psychology was invented, they were simply medicated and placed under house arrest. Thanks to the work of many notable psychologists, this is no longer the case. While it’s important to study those that surrounded Freud during his time, it is more important to think of the many ways that Freud impacted the world of psychology as we know it today.
Prior to the “great doctor” there was no such thing as psychoanalysis. Well, Charcot often used a wrist watch in order to simulate hypnosis in the hopes that it would cure mental disorders, but this did not exactly pan out. Instead, Freud came along and changed the mind of humanity as we now know it. Though his work was highly criticised during the time (and it still is today), the field of psychology will forever know his name.
Now that you know who some of the colleagues of Freud were, you may start to understand why various teacher/pupil relationships are so very vital. If it were not for Charcot, Freud may not have developed his psychoanalysis theory, and if it were not for Freud, Jung would not have jumped into the collective unconscious.