A timeline of psychotherapy and counselling
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Moral treatment, hypnosis & early clinics · up to 1894
Philosophical consolation, asylum reform, moral treatment, hypnotism, suggestion, and early dynamic theories of dissociation before formal psychotherapy schools.
Psychoanalysis, talking cures & early schools · 1895 to 1939
Psychoanalysis, rational persuasion, psychological clinics, individual and analytical psychology, psychodrama, play technique, character analysis, and early cultural critiques.
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Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud publish Studien über Hysterie
Viennese physicians Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud published Studien über Hysterie (Studies on Hysteria), combining their 1893 theoretical paper with five clinical case histories, including Breuer's treatment of Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), who famously described conversational symptom relief as the 'talking cure' and 'chimney-sweeping'. The authors proposed that affect associated with distressing memories could be converted into bodily symptoms, and described cathartic abreaction and associative exploration. This was their historical theory, not an established explanation for every bodily symptom.
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Why it matters
The book bridged late nineteenth-century neuropathology and psychoanalysis, introducing Freud's early concepts of psychological defence (Abwehr), resistance, and transference within an intensive talking relationship.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Moving from hypnotic catharsis toward encouraging waking patients to speak freely about whatever came to mind laid the clinical foundation for psychodynamic free association and emotional processing.
Important context and scope
A publication date, not the single beginning of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis; historical archival research later showed that Bertha Pappenheim's clinical outcome after Breuer's treatment was far more protracted and complex than depicted in the 1895 case report. Published in May 1895 in Leipzig and Vienna following Breuer and Freud's 1893 preliminary communication.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Library of Congress catalogue(primary or catalogue record)
- Internet Archive: Studien über Hysterie by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud (1895)(primary or catalogue record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Lightner Witmer begins a psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania
In 1896, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Lightner Witmer began examining and teaching children with learning and other difficulties in a psychological clinic. He outlined a plan for practical psychological work to the American Psychological Association later that year; his article “Clinical Psychology” appeared in 1907.
Classics in the History of Psychology: Lightner Witmer (1907) Clinical Psychology
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Why it matters
Witmer’s clinic and later writing contributed to the development of clinical psychology as a field combining psychological assessment, education and practical work.
In psychotherapy and counselling
In his 1907 account, Witmer described examining children’s difficulties and using individual educational instruction alongside observation.
Important context and scope
Witmer's clinic focused primarily on paediatric psychoeducational and behavioural remediation rather than adult conversational psychotherapy, which entered American clinical psychology more strongly after the Second World War. Clinic began in 1896; Witmer outlined a plan to the American Psychological Association in December 1896 and published “Clinical Psychology” in 1907.
Date type
Institutional or policy milestone
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology: Lightner Witmer (1907) Clinical Psychology(primary or catalogue record)
- American Psychological Association: Lightner Witmer and the first psychological clinic(institutional record)
- Wiley Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology: Lightner Witmer(scholarly or historical account)
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Sigmund Freud publishes Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams)
Sigmund Freud published Die Traumdeutung, arguing that dreams are meaningful psychological constructions shaped by unconscious wish-fulfilment and disguised through the mechanisms of dream-work (Traumarbeit): condensation, displacement, symbolic representation, and secondary revision. In the book's seventh chapter, he introduced his topographic model dividing the psyche into unconscious, preconscious, and conscious systems, along with primary and secondary mental processes.
Library of Congress: Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (1900)
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Why it matters
Freud himself regarded this book as his most significant theoretical work, as it moved psychoanalysis from a narrow theory of hysterical neurosis to a general depth psychology of ordinary human mental life.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Distinguishing between manifest content and latent unconscious meaning via the patient's own free associations became a cornerstone of psychoanalytic interpretation and exploratory psychotherapy.
Important context and scope
Modern sleep neurobiology and empirical dream research do not support Freud's universal thesis that all dreams are disguised infant wish-fulfilments, even as clinical work with personal dream imagery remains valued across psychodynamic and humanistic modalities. Printed by Franz Deuticke in November 1899, but post-dated 1900 on the title page to mark the new century.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Library of Congress: Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (1900)(primary or catalogue record)
- Internet Archive: Die Traumdeutung by Sigmund Freud (1900)(primary or catalogue record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Paul Dubois publishes Les psychonévroses et leur traitement moral on rational persuasion therapy
Swiss neuropathologist Paul Dubois published Les psychonévroses et leur traitement moral, rejecting both deceptive hypnotic suggestion and Freudian unconscious sexual interpretation in favour of 'persuasion rationnelle' (rational persuasion). Through candid, Socratic dialogue, Dubois sought to educate patients about how faulty logic, heightened self-observation, and fearful expectations amplified and maintained functional nervous symptoms.
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Why it matters
Dubois's rational psychotherapy was one of the most widely practised medical psychotherapies in Europe and North America before 1914 and served as a direct conceptual precursor to mid-century cognitive therapies.
In psychotherapy and counselling
His focus on identifying illogical health anxieties, correcting catastrophic self-talk through collaborative reasoning, and encouraging active mastery anticipates Albert Ellis's rational emotive behaviour therapy and Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy.
Important context and scope
Critics such as Freud and Janet argued that Dubois's rational persuasion still relied heavily on the physician's personal prestige and warmth rather than purely intellectual logic. Published in Paris by Masson in 1904 with a foreword by Jules Dejerine; English translation published in 1905 as The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders by Paul Dubois (1905 translation of 1904 edition)(primary or catalogue record)
- Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica): Les psychonévroses et leur traitement moral by Paul Dubois(primary or catalogue record)
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Joseph Hersey Pratt begins tuberculosis classes in Boston
Boston physician Joseph Hersey Pratt organised classes for people with tuberculosis, combining education about home care with encouragement and opportunities to discuss their efforts. His 1907 paper described the class method for patients unable to afford sanatorium treatment.
Pratt (1907), The class method of treating consumption in the homes of the poor
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Why it matters
Later histories of group psychotherapy identify Pratt’s classes as an early group-based approach to medical care. They do not establish the separate effect of any one group process.
In psychotherapy and counselling
The classes used teaching and encouragement in a large group. The historical account describes an instructional and inspirational approach, distinct from later small-group psychotherapy.
Important context and scope
By 1922 Pratt had extended the class method to some other medical conditions, according to the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s history. The American Group Psychotherapy Association dates the beginning of Pratt’s groups to July 1905.
Date type
Clinical study or review
Sources
- Pratt (1907), The class method of treating consumption in the homes of the poor(primary or catalogue record)
- American Group Psychotherapy Association: A brief history of the association(institutional record)
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Clifford Whittingham Beers publishes A Mind That Found Itself and launches the mental hygiene movement
Drawing on three years of personal confinement in private and state psychiatric institutions following a suicide attempt and severe mood episodes, Clifford Whittingham Beers published his autobiography A Mind That Found Itself, exposing mechanical restraint, physical abuse, and institutional neglect. Working alongside psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and philosopher William James, Beers founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene in 1908 and the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1909.
Project Gutenberg: A Mind That Found Itself by Clifford Whittingham Beers (1908)
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Why it matters
Beers inaugurated the modern service-user and lived-experience advocacy movement in mental health, shifting policy toward outpatient prevention, early community intervention, and patients' human rights.
In psychotherapy and counselling
His partnership with Adolf Meyer promoted community clinics, psychiatric social work, and viewing distress through a biopsychosocial life-chart perspective rather than custodial asylum isolation.
Important context and scope
While Beers championed humane care and survivor dignity, segments of the broader early twentieth-century mental hygiene movement became entangled with coercive social control and eugenic policies before later reform. Published in March 1908 with an endorsement by William James; the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene was founded in May 1908 and the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1909.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Project Gutenberg: A Mind That Found Itself by Clifford Whittingham Beers (1908)(primary or catalogue record)
- Mental Health America: About MHA(institutional record)
- (link to this entry)
Salzburg Congress (1908), Clark University lectures (1909), and founding of the IPA at Nuremberg (1910)
Following the First International Psychoanalytical Congress in Salzburg in April 1908, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, accompanied by Sándor Ferenczi, travelled to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in September 1909 at G. Stanley Hall's invitation to deliver five lectures on psychoanalysis to an American audience including William James and Adolf Meyer. At the Second Congress in Nuremberg in March 1910, on Ferenczi's motion, they formally established the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) with Jung as its first president.
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Why it matters
The 1908-1910 sequence transformed psychoanalysis from a Viennese discussion circle into an international clinical movement with branch societies, training standards, and English-language reach.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Freud's accessible Clark lectures (Über Psychoanalyse) introduced English-speaking practitioners to repression, childhood emotional development, dream interpretation, and transference, while the IPA created the institutional framework for analytic training.
Important context and scope
Centralised authority within the IPA also intensified doctrinal disputes over what counted as legitimate psychoanalysis, contributing to the departures of Alfred Adler (1911) and Carl Gustav Jung (1913-1914). Covers the First International Psychoanalytical Congress in Salzburg (April 1908), Freud and Jung's Clark University lectures in Worcester, Massachusetts (September 1909), and the founding of the IPA at Nuremberg (March 1910).
Date type
Institutional or policy milestone
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology: Sigmund Freud (1910) The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis (Clark Lectures)(primary or catalogue record)
- International Psychoanalytical Association: History of the IPA(institutional record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Alfred Adler publishes Über den nervösen Charakter and establishes Individual Psychology
After breaking with Freud in 1911 over the primacy of sexual drives, Viennese physician Alfred Adler published Über den nervösen Charakter (The Neurotic Constitution) in 1912, founding 'Individualpsychologie' (Individual Psychology). Adler argued that human behaviour is holistically goal-directed, shaped by feelings of inferiority, compensatory striving for significance, subjective 'fictional finalism', family constellation, and social relatedness ('Gemeinschaftsgefühl', later elaborated as social interest).
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Why it matters
Adler initiated the first major relational, socially oriented, and teleological departure from classical drive theory, directly influencing ego psychology, humanistic therapy, cognitive therapy, and family counselling.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Adlerian therapy replaced the couch with face-to-face egalitarian dialogue, explored early memories and lifestyle beliefs (private logic), and established public child and family guidance clinics across working-class Vienna in the 1920s.
Important context and scope
Many of Adler's clinical innovations, including collaborative goal setting, homework tasks, and examining core beliefs, were absorbed into mainstream cognitive and brief therapies without always retaining his name. Adler resigned from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911 to form the Society for Free Psychoanalytic Inquiry (soon renamed Individual Psychology) and published Über den nervösen Charakter in 1912.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: The Neurotic Constitution by Alfred Adler (English translation of Über den nervösen Charakter)(primary or catalogue record)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Alfred Adler and Individual Psychology(scholarly or historical account)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Sigmund Freud publishes his Papers on Technique codifying the psychoanalytic frame
Between 1912 and 1914, Sigmund Freud published papers on psychoanalytic practice, including Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis, On Beginning the Treatment and Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. He discussed listening, the treatment setting, repetition and transference as parts of his clinical approach.
Library of Congress: Sigmund Freud Papers
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Why it matters
These papers became influential in the development of psychoanalytic approaches to clinical technique.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Freud described ways of listening and working with patients. Later psychodynamic practices differ in how they use and interpret these recommendations.
Important context and scope
In his 1912 recommendations, Freud presented technical rules arising from his own experience and allowed that another clinician might work differently. Covers Freud's technical series published between 1911 and 1915, especially Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis (1912), On Beginning the Treatment (1913), and Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (1914).
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Library of Congress: Sigmund Freud Papers(primary or catalogue record)
- Freud Edition: Ratschläge für den Arzt bei der psychoanalytischen Behandlung (1912)(primary or catalogue record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Carl Gustav Jung publishes Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido and forms Analytical Psychology
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (later translated as Psychology of the Unconscious), redefining libido as generalised psychic energy rather than exclusively sexual drive and interpreting clinical fantasy through comparative mythology and symbol formation. The theoretical divergence precipitated his break with Freud (1913-1914) and the founding of 'Analytische Psychologie' (Analytical Psychology).
Internet Archive: Psychology of the Unconscious by C. G. Jung (1916 translation of the 1912 edition)
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Why it matters
Jung broadened depth psychology to encompass adult mid-life development, spiritual and existential meaning, psychological types, complexes (a term he developed through word-association experiments at the Burghölzli), and the collective unconscious.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Jungian analysis introduced active imagination, expressive sand and art work, dream amplification, and a dialectical, face-to-face therapeutic encounter aimed at individuation.
Important context and scope
Jung's speculative theories of inherited archetypes and his controversial writings during the 1930s have drawn sustained historical and methodological critique alongside his lasting influence on depth and expressive therapies. Published in two parts across 1911 and 1912 in the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen and as a book in 1912; Jung resigned as IPA president in 1914.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: Psychology of the Unconscious by C. G. Jung (1916 translation of the 1912 edition)(primary or catalogue record)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Carl Jung and Analytical Psychology(scholarly or historical account)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Charles S. Myers describes shell shock (1915) and W. H. R. Rivers treats war neurosis at Craiglockhart (1917)
In 1915, Charles Samuel Myers published an account of three First World War soldiers with memory and sensory disturbances under the heading shell shock. At Craiglockhart War Hospital, W. H. R. Rivers worked with officers experiencing war-related distress and later wrote about the repression of war experience.
Rivers (1918), An address on the repression of war experience (The Lancet)
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Why it matters
The cases and later debates show how military clinicians encountered and interpreted psychological distress during the First World War.
In psychotherapy and counselling
In his 1918 address, Rivers discussed repression of war experiences and argued for helping patients confront experiences that troubled them. This historical account does not establish the effectiveness of any one treatment for all trauma survivors.
Important context and scope
Military responses varied and were shaped by medical debates, rank and the demands of war. Charles Samuel Myers published his Lancet paper introducing the medical use of 'shell shock' in February 1915; W. H. R. Rivers practised talking treatment at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh across 1916-1917 and published in The Lancet in 1918.
Date type
Clinical study or review
Sources
- Rivers (1918), An address on the repression of war experience (The Lancet)(primary or catalogue record)
- Myers (1915), A contribution to the study of shell shock(primary or catalogue record)
- (link to this entry)
The Berlin Poliklinik für Psychoanalyse and London's Tavistock Clinic open for low-fee outpatient therapy
In February 1920, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernst Simmel opened the Berlin Poliklinik für Psychoanalyse to provide free and low-fee analytic treatment across social classes while establishing the tripartite 'Eitingon model' of training (personal analysis, seminars, and supervised cases). Seven months later, in September 1920, Hugh Crichton-Miller founded the Tavistock Square Clinic in London to offer multidisciplinary psychodynamic outpatient care to adults and children unable to afford private fees.
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust: Our History
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Why it matters
Together, the Berlin Poliklinik and the Tavistock Clinic transformed psychodynamic therapy from an affluent private-practice luxury into a civic, outpatient public health service and codified modern clinical training and supervision.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Combining sliding-scale community access with structured clinical supervision, case conferences, and child and adult departments created the institutional template for twentieth-century psychotherapy training institutes and public mental health clinics.
Important context and scope
While the Berlin Poliklinik was forcibly dissolved and absorbed into the Göring Institute under Nazi rule in 1933, the Tavistock Clinic expanded and entered the British National Health Service upon its creation in 1948. The Berlin Poliklinik für Psychoanalyse opened on 14 February 1920 (Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, Ernst Simmel) and the Tavistock Square Clinic opened in London in September 1920 (Hugh Crichton-Miller).
Date type
Institutional or policy milestone
Sources
- Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust: Our History(institutional record)
- PubMed: Danto (1999) The Berlin Poliklinik: psychoanalytic innovation in Weimar Germany(scholarly or historical account)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Jacob Levy Moreno explores improvised theatre in Vienna
In Vienna during the early 1920s, Jacob Levy Moreno explored improvised theatre. After moving to the United States, he developed psychodrama, an approach using dramatic action and group participation.
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Why it matters
Moreno’s work contributed to the development of psychodrama and group psychotherapy.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Psychodrama uses dramatic enactment and role-playing in a group. The historical development of the approach does not establish its effectiveness for every person or concern.
Important context and scope
Later accounts distinguish Moreno’s early theatre experiments from the subsequent development of psychodrama as a clinical method. Moreno explored improvised theatre in Vienna in the early 1920s; psychodrama developed over subsequent years.
Date type
Historical or conference event
Sources
- History and development of psychodrama, in The Spread and Development of Psychodrama in Mainland China (2018)(scholarly or historical account)
- American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama: About us(institutional record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Hermann Rorschach publishes Psychodiagnostik and introduces the inkblot perception method
Swiss psychiatrist and artist Hermann Rorschach published Psychodiagnostik: Methodik und Ergebnisse eines wahrnehmungsdiagnostischen Experiments, presenting ten standardised bilateral inkblot cards developed through empirical testing with psychiatric patients and non-clinical controls at Herisau Asylum. Rorschach focused not simply on symbolic content but on perceptual form, movement (B), colour (Fb), and whole-versus-detail responses to assess personality structure and perceptual organisation.
University of Bern Rorschach Archives bibliography: Psychodiagnostik (1921)
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Why it matters
Psychodiagnostik helped launch formal personality and projective assessment, giving clinical psychologists a distinctive diagnostic role alongside psychiatry throughout the twentieth century.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Analysing how individuals structure ambiguous perceptual stimuli informed psychodynamic case formulation, cognitive-perceptual style assessment, and collaborative therapeutic assessment.
Important context and scope
Rorschach conceived his task as an empirical experiment in perception rather than a test of unconscious projection; subsequent proliferation of unstandardised scoring systems drew sharp psychometric criticism until John Exner's Comprehensive System (1974) and later R-PAS reforms. Published by Ernst Bircher in Bern in June 1921, less than a year before Hermann Rorschach's sudden death at age 37 in April 1922.
Date type
Publication year
Source
- University of Bern Rorschach Archives bibliography: Psychodiagnostik (1921)(primary or catalogue record)
- (link to this entry)
Girindrasekhar Bose forms the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in Calcutta
Physician and psychologist Girindrasekhar Bose founded the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in Calcutta in 1922 after publishing Concept of Repression (1921) and entering into a long theoretical correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Through Ernest Jones and the International Psychoanalytical Association, the society became one of the earliest formally affiliated psychoanalytic institutions outside Europe and North America.
International Psychoanalytical Association: Asia-Pacific history
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Why it matters
Bose’s work offers an early example of psychoanalytic ideas being developed and debated in an Indian context.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Bose proposed a theory of opposite wishes and drew on Indian philosophical and religious texts in his writing about psychoanalysis.
Important context and scope
This records an institution, not the beginning of psychological healing or therapy in India, where rich indigenous contemplative, Ayurvedic, and relational traditions existed for millennia. Founded in Calcutta (Kolkata) in January 1922 by Girindrasekhar Bose and recognised by the International Psychoanalytical Association later that year.
Date type
Institutional or policy milestone
Sources
- International Psychoanalytical Association: Asia-Pacific history(institutional record)
- Concept of Repression, review of Bose’s 1921 work, Indian Medical Gazette(scholarly or historical account)
- (link to this entry)
Mary Cover Jones reports the case of Peter
In 1924, psychologist Mary Cover Jones described work with Peter, a boy aged two years and ten months who showed fear of a rabbit and other objects. She reported gradual changes during sessions that used other children as models and, later, food alongside the rabbit.
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Why it matters
The case became an early historical example of efforts to reduce learned fear. Jones reported that Peter showed less fear of several other objects at the last interview as well as increased tolerance of the rabbit.
In psychotherapy and counselling
The report describes changes in procedure over time, including observation of other children and a gradual approach to the rabbit during food. These historical methods are not a protocol for present-day treatment.
Important context and scope
The Peter report is a single case with interruptions and several procedures used together; it cannot isolate their individual effects or establish outcomes for other children. A separate 1924 paper discusses a wider study of 70 institutionalised children. Jones published the broader study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the case of Peter in the Pedagogical Seminary in 1924.
Date type
Clinical study or review
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology: Mary Cover Jones (1924) A Laboratory Study of Fear: The Case of Peter(primary or catalogue record)
- American Psychological Association: Mary Cover Jones profile(institutional record)
- Jones (1924): The Elimination of Children’s Fears (Journal of Experimental Psychology)(primary or catalogue record)
- (link to this entry)
Otto Rank publishes Das Trauma der Geburt and with Sándor Ferenczi advances active and relational therapy
Building on Sándor Ferenczi's 1919 paper Technische Schwierigkeiten einer Hysterieanalyse (active therapy), Otto Rank published Das Trauma der Geburt (1924) and co-authored Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (1924) with Ferenczi, proposing that the prototype of anxiety lies in primary separation from the mother at birth rather than later paternal castration threats. In his clinical practice and subsequent books on 'will therapy' (Technik der Psychoanalyse, 1926-1931), Rank emphasised the pre-Oedipal mother-child relationship, present-centred emotional experiencing (Erlebnis) in the therapeutic relationship, and setting a fixed termination date to work through separation and autonomy.
Internet Archive: The Trauma of Birth by Otto Rank (1929 translation of the 1924 German edition)
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Why it matters
Rank and Ferenczi's shift from passive historical reconstruction toward maternal separation, active experiential engagement, and time-limited endings laid foundations for object-relations theory, brief dynamic therapy, existential therapy, and client-centred counselling.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Through his teaching in Paris and at the Pennsylvania School of Social Work with Jessie Taft and Frederick Allen, Rank directly influenced Carl Rogers's formulation of client-centred therapy and James Mann's time-limited psychotherapy.
Important context and scope
Orthodox members of Freud's committee rejected Rank's challenge to the primacy of the Oedipus complex, leading to Rank's departure from Freud's circle in 1926. Published in Leipzig, Vienna, and Zurich in December 1923 (dated 1924) alongside Rank and Sándor Ferenczi's joint monograph Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (1924), which built on Ferenczi's 1919 paper Technische Schwierigkeiten einer Hysterieanalyse proposing 'active therapy'.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: The Trauma of Birth by Otto Rank (1929 translation of the 1924 German edition)(primary or catalogue record)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto Rank(scholarly or historical account)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Trigant Burrow introduces group analysis and challenges the authoritarian dyad
American psychoanalyst Trigant Burrow developed group-based research with Clarence Shields and other participants. His 1927 work The Social Basis of Consciousness discussed social relationships and the study of human behaviour.
Yale University Library: Trigant Burrow Papers, biographical note
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Why it matters
Burrow was an early contributor to group analysis, a forerunner of later group approaches.
In psychotherapy and counselling
His work examined relationships and tensions among participants in groups. Later group analysts developed their own approaches.
Important context and scope
Burrow’s work diverged from established psychoanalytic practice. Accounts differ on the date of his departure from the American Psychoanalytic Association. Burrow began experimental group sessions with Clarence Shields in 1923 and published 'The Group Method of Analysis' in The Psychoanalytic Review in 1927.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Yale University Library: Trigant Burrow Papers, biographical note(institutional record)
- Internet Archive: The Social Basis of Consciousness by Trigant Burrow (1927)(primary or catalogue record)
- (link to this entry)
Sándor Ferenczi presents Confusion of Tongues Between the Adults and the Child
At the 1932 Wiesbaden Congress, Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi presented a paper later known in English as Confusion of Tongues Between the Adults and the Child. He discussed the impact of abuse and the adult’s response to the child, and described identification with an aggressor.
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Why it matters
The paper is part of the history of psychoanalytic thinking about childhood trauma and the therapeutic relationship. Its clinical arguments are not evidence that every person responds to trauma in the same way.
In psychotherapy and counselling
He advocated clinical humility, openly acknowledging the therapist's own countertransference mistakes, and offering genuine empathetic attunement rather than aloof professional reserve when treating trauma survivors.
Important context and scope
The paper was presented in 1932 and published in German in 1933. The linked 1988 journal publication reproduces an English translation. Presented at the Twelfth International Psychoanalytical Congress in Wiesbaden in September 1932; the paper was published in German in 1933.
Date type
Historical or conference event
Source
- Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child (1988 journal republication of English translation)(primary or catalogue record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Margaret Lowenfeld and Melanie Klein develop approaches to child play
In London, Margaret Lowenfeld developed the World Technique, using toys and sand trays to help children express experiences. In The Psycho-Analysis of Children (1932), Melanie Klein described an analytic play technique and her interpretations of children’s play.
Melanie Klein Trust: The Psycho-Analysis of Children (1932)
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Why it matters
Their different approaches contributed to the history of child psychotherapy and the use of play in clinical work.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Lowenfeld’s World Technique used toys and sand trays; Klein’s approach interpreted play within a psychoanalytic framework. These are historical approaches, not proof of a single interpretation of a child’s play.
Important context and scope
The two clinicians developed distinct approaches to children’s expression and its interpretation. Lowenfeld opened the Children’s Clinic in 1928 and developed the World Technique in the late 1920s; Klein published The Psycho-Analysis of Children in 1932.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Melanie Klein Trust: The Psycho-Analysis of Children (1932)(institutional record)
- Dr Margaret Lowenfeld Trust: The World Technique(institutional record)
Related
- (link to this entry)
Johannes Heinrich Schultz publishes Das autogene Training on concentrative self-relaxation
German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz published Das autogene Training (konzentrative Selbstentspannung) in 1932. Autogenic training is a self-relaxation method that uses passive concentration on bodily sensations and was developed in relation to hypnosis.
PubMed: Stetter and Kupper (2002) Autogenic training: a meta-analysis of clinical outcome studies
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Why it matters
The method became a form of self-directed relaxation practice. A 2002 meta-analysis reviewed 60 controlled clinical studies, including 35 randomised trials, across a range of conditions.
In psychotherapy and counselling
The exercises involve repeated attention to sensations such as heaviness and warmth. Findings from the 2002 review varied with the condition and comparison used; they do not establish that the method produces the same effect for every person.
Important context and scope
From 1936 to 1945, Schultz was assistant director of the Göring Institute under the Nazi regime. A historical study documents his advocacy of compulsory sterilisation and participation in abusive treatments of homosexual concentration-camp prisoners. Its authors note that they relied on written sources and could not interview contemporary witnesses. First edition of Das autogene Training (konzentrative Selbstentspannung) published by Georg Thieme Verlag in Leipzig in 1932.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- PubMed: Stetter and Kupper (2002) Autogenic training: a meta-analysis of clinical outcome studies(scholarly or historical account)
- WorldCat catalogue: Das autogene Training (konzentrative Selbstentspannung) by J. H. Schultz (1932)(primary or catalogue record)
- Brunner, Schrempf and Steger (2008): Johannes Heinrich Schultz and National Socialism, abstract(scholarly or historical account)
- (link to this entry)
Wilhelm Reich publishes Charakteranalyse on character and resistance
In Charakteranalyse (1933), Wilhelm Reich presented an approach to psychoanalytic technique that attended to recurring patterns of character and resistance as well as what patients said. He later proposed a connection between psychological defence and muscular tension.
Internet Archive: Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich
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Why it matters
Reich’s ideas contributed to later discussions of psychoanalytic technique and body-oriented approaches. His account of character and muscular armour remains a theory, not a proven universal mechanism.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Reich argued for attending to the manner of communication and resistance in treatment. His proposed sequence is a historical clinical approach, not a rule established for every therapy.
Important context and scope
Later editions included Reich’s ideas about bodily tension and orgone energy. A review of different body psychotherapy interventions does not establish Reich’s particular theory of muscular armour. Published in Vienna in 1933 based on Reich's clinical seminars at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Ambulatorium (1924-1930).
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich(primary or catalogue record)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Wilhelm Reich(scholarly or historical account)
- Shapiro (2002): Theoretical reflections on Wilhelm Reich’s character analysis(scholarly or historical account)
- Rosendahl and colleagues (2021): Effectiveness of body psychotherapy, systematic review and meta-analysis(scholarly or historical account)
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- (link to this entry)
Anna Freud publishes Das Ich und die Mechanismen der Abwehr (The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence)
Anna Freud published Das Ich und die Mechanismen der Abwehr, cataloguing and illustrating with clinical vignettes how the ego protects itself against instinctual anxiety, superego guilt, and external danger through mechanisms including repression, regression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against the self, reversal, sublimation, intellectualisation, and altruistic surrender. She contended that the analyst's proper vantage point is equidistant from the id, the ego, and the superego.
Internet Archive: The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence by Anna Freud
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Why it matters
Her book launched modern Ego Psychology and developmental psychopathology, establishing that observing how a person defends against distress in the present is as clinically essential as uncovering unconscious wishes.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Systematic attention to adaptive versus rigid defence mechanisms, developmental lines in childhood, and strengthening ego coping capacities became foundational across psychodynamic assessment and supportive-expressive therapy.
Important context and scope
In London during the 1940s, Anna Freud's developmental ego approach clashed with Melanie Klein's emphasis on early unconscious phantasy in the British Psychoanalytical Society's 'Controversial Discussions' (1941-1945). Published in German by the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag in Vienna in May 1936 for Sigmund Freud's eightieth birthday; English translation published in 1937.
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Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence by Anna Freud(primary or catalogue record)
- Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families: History and Anna Freud's legacy(institutional record)
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- (link to this entry)
Saul Rosenzweig proposes the common factors model and the Dodo bird verdict
In a 1936 paper, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig proposed that different approaches to psychotherapy might share factors relevant to their results. He used the Dodo bird from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to illustrate the question of success across competing approaches.
Rosenzweig (1936), Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy
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Why it matters
The paper contributed an early formulation of common factors in psychotherapy and prompted later research on how treatments work.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Later researchers have examined shared features such as the therapeutic relationship and treatment rationale, alongside the contributions of particular interventions.
Important context and scope
Rosenzweig’s paper was a theoretical proposal, not an empirical meta-analysis or proof that every treatment works equally well. Published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 412-415) in July 1936.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Rosenzweig (1936), Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy(primary or catalogue record)
- PubMed Central: Wampold (2015) How important are the common factors in psychotherapy? An update(scholarly or historical account)
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- (link to this entry)
Karen Horney publishes The Neurotic Personality of Our Time advancing cultural and feminist psychoanalysis
In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), psychoanalyst Karen Horney gave cultural and interpersonal conditions a central role in her account of neurosis. She discussed basic anxiety and challenged explanations that placed primary weight on biological drives. These are elements of her theory, not an established account of every person’s distress.
Internet Archive: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Horney (1937)
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Why it matters
Horney’s 1937 book helped develop a cultural and interpersonal approach to psychoanalytic theory. Her earlier essays had challenged aspects of Freud’s account of women’s psychology.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Horney argued for attention to current relationships and cultural pressures. Her proposed explanations are historical clinical ideas; this entry does not establish that they apply to every person.
Important context and scope
Horney developed her ideas over several books. Our Inner Conflicts (1945) presented the strategies of moving toward, against and away from people; Neurosis and Human Growth (1950) developed her account of the idealised self and the tyranny of the shoulds. These later formulations should not be attributed wholesale to the 1937 book. Published in New York by W. W. Norton in 1937 after Horney's emigration from Berlin to the United States.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Internet Archive: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Horney (1937)(primary or catalogue record)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Karen Horney(scholarly or historical account)
- Bernard J. Paris: Brief account of Karen Horney and bibliography(scholarly or historical account)
- Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry: review of Our Inner Conflicts (1946)(scholarly or historical account)
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- (link to this entry)
Carl R. Rogers publishes The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child
Based on more than a decade of pragmatic child guidance work in Rochester, New York, psychologist Carl R. Rogers published The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child, evaluating environmental, foster-care, expressive, and direct interview therapies for troubled children. Influenced by Otto Rank's relational ideas and Jessie Taft's 'relationship therapy', Rogers highlighted how a warm, accepting, non-judgemental clinical relationship allowed children and parents to clarify feelings and gain self-understanding.
Library of Congress: Carl R. Rogers Papers
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Why it matters
This book marked Rogers's transition from applied child guidance clinician to academic theorist (earning him a professorship at Ohio State University in 1940) and laid the direct clinical bridge to his December 1940 speech introducing non-directive counselling.
In psychotherapy and counselling
Rogers's emphasis on emotional acceptance, respecting the client's capacity for self-direction, and evaluating treatment processes empirically prefigured his 1942 book Counseling and Psychotherapy and the humanistic movement.
Important context and scope
The 1939 volume still included diagnostic testing and environmental placement routines alongside relationship therapy; Rogers articulated his fully non-directive stance over the next three years (1940-1942). Published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston in 1939 while Rogers directed the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children guidance clinic.
Date type
Publication year
Sources
- Library of Congress: Carl R. Rogers Papers(primary or catalogue record)
- Internet Archive: The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child by Carl R. Rogers (1939)(primary or catalogue record)
Related
Humanistic, behavioural & group turns · 1940 to 1969
Client-centred counselling, existential logotherapy, Gestalt therapy, group analysis, therapeutic communities, systematic desensitisation, attachment theory, and early cognitive therapy.
Cognitive, systemic, feminist & outcome research · 1970 to 1989
Manualised cognitive and interpersonal therapies, structural and Milan systemic family models, feminist and relational perspectives, meta-analysis, and the working alliance.
Third-wave, narrative, trauma & evidence movements · 1990 to 2009
Narrative and solution-focused therapies, motivational interviewing, trauma staging, DBT, ACT, MBCT, schema and mentalization models, multicultural competencies, and evidence-based practice.
Pluralism, digital care & global mental health · 2010 to present
Pluralistic and transdiagnostic frameworks, alliance rupture-repair research, internet-delivered and remote therapy, community task-sharing trials, and shared decision-making.
About this timeline and its sources
This chronology brings together 125 selected milestones across the history of psychotherapy and psychological counselling. It traces moral treatment and early hypnosis, psychoanalysis and psychodynamic schools, humanistic and existential practice, behavioural and cognitive therapies, systemic and relational work, third-wave contextual models, common-factors and outcome research, and global community-based interventions.
Dates record different kinds of historical evidence. A book or treatment manual date marks when a text appeared in print, not a single moment when a therapeutic tradition began. A clinical study date marks either when research took place or when its report was published. Institutional dates record the founding of clinics, societies, training standards, or public programmes.
Historical influence is distinct from clinical evidence. Many foundational works relied on clinical case descriptions, philosophical synthesis, or retrospective institutional accounts rather than controlled outcome trials. Where later research, replication work, or cultural critique has qualified an early claim, the entry context notes those boundaries explicitly.
This site is an educational draft within the Therapy101 reference family. It provides historical and conceptual orientation only, with no medical advice, diagnostic tools, or personalised treatment recommendations. Text size and sidebar preferences are stored locally in your browser.