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HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 1

© 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 1–22
[18:1;1–22; DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051123]

‘Psychotherapy’: the invention

of a word
SONU SHAMDASANI

ABSTRACT
This paper traces the manner in which the word ‘psychotherapy’ was
invented and how it became taken up and disseminated in the English-,
French- and German-speaking medical worlds at the end of the 19th
century. It explores how it was used as an appellation for a variety of
practices, and then increasingly became perceived as a distinct entity in
its own right. Finally it shows how the fate of the word ‘psychotherapy’
enables Freud’s invention of ‘psychoanalysis’ to be located.
Key words Bernheim, Freud, hypnosis, psychoanalysis,
psychotherapy, Tuke

It is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in

order to create in the long run new ‘things’. (Nietzsche, 1887)1
The end of the 19th century witnessed a plethora of new therapeutics, as fads
and fashions spread throughout the medical world. Fin-de-siècle nervous
patients had an extensive menu of dietic treatments, medications, remedies, air
cures, water cures, bath cures, rest cures, electric treatments, psychic
treatments, mental healing, massage, gymnastics, spas, and private and public
institutions to choose from. New terms and neologisms abounded. While elec-
trotherapy, balneotherapy, climatotherapy, metallotherapy, mechanotherapy
and magnetotherapy did not survive, two which entered the vocabu-laries at
this time and rapidly spread across Europe and America are still with us today.
In this article, I plan to explore the genealogies of the word ‘psychotherapy’
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2 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

and trace how the manner in which it became taken up may serve as a window
into the constitution of this discipline, and, finally, how this may enable
Freud’s nomination of psychoanalysis to be located.2
It was in 1872 that the word ‘psycho-therapeutics’ was coined by Daniel
Hack Tuke in his work Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the
Body in Health and Disease designed to elucidate the Action of the Imagin-
ation.3 Tuke was a psychiatrist and the great-grandson of William Tuke, the
founder of the York Retreat. Tuke claimed that physicians had long known
the healing power of the imagination, but that now it could be made rational.
This would serve to distinguish them from quacks – the latter being indi-
viduals who healed without knowing how they did so. The penultimate
chapter of his book was titled ‘Psycho-Therapeutics – Practical Applications
of the Influence of the Mind on the Body to Medical Practice’. While dis-
cussing animal magnetism, he argued:
Assuming that the first French Commission on Animal Magnetism
(1784) were correct in regarding the phenomena as fairly referable to
Imagination and Imitation, we must agree with them that they consti-
tute the groundwork of a NEW SCIENCE – that of the Moral over the
Physical.4
The commissioners, who included Benjamin Franklin and Lavoisier, rejected
the claims of animal magnetism to be scientific, and argued that the results of
Mesmer and his disciples should be ‘ascribed solely to the influence of the
imagination’.5 Tuke inverted their intention, and claimed that as their report
showed that what animal magnetism ‘really’ demonstrated was the physical
effects of the imagination, a new science and therapeutics could be founded
upon their apparent denunciation of animal magnetism. For Tuke, mes-
merism thus displayed how ‘certain purely psychical agencies produce
certain physical results’.6
While boldly proclaiming the new science of psycho-therapeutics, Tuke
appears not to have made further use of the term. The fourth edition of his
A Manual of Psychological Medicine of 1879, written with John Bucknill,
does not mention the term, and nor indeed do the numerous articles which
he wrote in the Journal of Mental Science.7 Thus the new science might well
have been stillborn had it not been taken up by Hippolyte Bernheim.
It was through the work of Bernheim and the Nancy school that the
therapeutic practice of hypnosis and suggestion rapidly spread throughout
Europe and America. Bernheim, a professor of medicine at Nancy, had become
interested in the work of Auguste Ambroise Liébault, a country doctor who
practised hypnosis. According to Bernheim, it was Liébault who established
‘the doctrine of therapeutic suggestion’.8 He claimed that suggestion was as ‘old
as the world’.9 What was new was its systematic application to therapeutics.
For Bernheim, the use of suggestions not only featured prominently in his
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 3

practice, it formed the theoretical key to understanding hypnosis and a general

psychology of the mind. Hypnosis was understood as a state of heightened
suggestibility, akin to sleep. He defined suggestion widely, as the act by which
an idea is accepted in the brain. For Bernheim and the Nancy school, sugges-
tive therapeutics consisted in the deliberate manipulation of credence, belief
and expectation under the rubric of suggestion and autosuggestion in the treat-
ment of a wide range of psychological and physical conditions. In addition to
functional neuroses, Bernheim claimed that it was effective in cases of paraly-
ses, contractures, insomnia, muscular pain, hemiplegia, paraplegia, rheumatism,
anaesthesia, gastric disorders, neuralgia and sciatica. For Bernheim, the
common factor active in religious healing as well as in many therapeutic prac-
tices, was suggestion:
In the waking state credence is increased by religious faith (religious
suggestion, miraculous cures), and by faith in medicines or medical
practices (cure by fictitious medicines, magnets, metals, electricity,
hydrotherapeutics, the tractors of Perkins, massage, the system of
Mattei, &c.). The idea of cure suggested by these practices may cause
the psychical organ to act and obtain from it the curative effect, not that
the sum total of these practices is suggestion, but that suggestion is a
factor in every one of them.10
Thus ‘suggestion’ was presented as a modern rational scientific concept which
both explained and unmasked prior and contemporary medical
therapies and forms of religious healing. Individuals flocked to Nancy to visit
Bernheim and Liébault and watch them at work, and gain instruction in
hypnosis. Nancy became a ‘medical Mecca’.11 A hypnotic movement spread
rapidly through Europe. A controversy raged between the Nancy school and
the Salpêtrière school, under the neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. For
Charcot and his followers, hypnosis was a pathological condition, which was
found only in cases of hysteria. What Charcot described as ‘grand hypnotisme’
followed three stages, each of which had distinct physiological characteristics:
catalepsy, lethargy and somnambulism. At the Salpêtrière, Charcot used
hypnosis to study the underlying architecture of hysteria; because he claimed
it was a pathological state, he was not interested in its therapeutic applications.
In 1886, Hack Tuke’s Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the
Body appeared in French translation.12 That year, the second expanded
edition of Bernheim’s work on suggestion appeared. Bernheim cited the
French edition of Tuke’s book and referred to what he termed the ‘psycho-
therapeutic action’ (‘l’action psycho-thérapeutique’). He wrote: ‘to provoke
this special psychic state by hypnotism and to exploit it with the aim of cure or
of relief . . . this is the role of the hypnotic psycho-therapeutic [psycho-
thérapeutique hypnotique]’.13 Thus Bernheim appropriated Tuke’s terms as
adjectival descriptions of his suggestive therapeutics. As the word was used
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4 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

as a synonym, there was no need for a separate definition of psycho-

therapeutics. In the second edition of his book, Bernheim expanded his
historical reinterpretation of prior medical and religious therapeutics in terms
of suggestion, drawing on Tuke’s work and other sources. Tuke, meanwhile,
took an active interest in the French developments which he reviewed and
reported on in The Journal of Mental Science, but did not himself connect
them with his new science of psycho-therapeutics.14 One may conjecture that
if Tuke had pursued his new science, the keyword would have been imagin-
ation, and not suggestion.
In 1889, the word was taken up by an English physician, Charles Lloyd
Tuckey, who published an exposition of the work of the Nancy school.
Tuckey titled his work, Psycho-therapeutics, or Treatment by Hypnotism and
Suggestion. This appears to have been the first work employing this word in
its title. Following Bernheim’s usage, psycho-therapeutics for Tuckey was a
synonym for what was being practised by the Nancy school. Thus we find
that no separate definition of ‘psycho-therapeutics’ was offered. Tuckey
claimed that it was Liébault who had ‘arrived at the truth of psycho-
therapeutics’.15
In 1887, two Dutch physicians, Frederik van Eeden and Albert Willem van
Renterghem, opened a clinic for suggestive therapy in Amsterdam.16 Interest
in hypnosis in the Netherlands had been sparked through a tour by the stage
hypnotist Hans Donato in 1887. Van Eeden and van Renterghem had visited
Bernheim in his clinic, and were impressed by what they had witnessed.
In 1889, they named their clinic the ‘clinique de psycho-thérapeutique
suggestive’.17 Their clinic appears to have been the first institution to employ
the word ‘psycho-therapeutic’. The term was contagious. By 1891, there was
already a ‘clinique de psycho-thérapeutique suggestive’ in Brussels.
Shortly after Tuckey’s book, Robert Felkin published a long article in the
Edinburgh Medical Journal which was republished as a book in 1890 under
the title Hypnotism, or Psycho-therapeutics.18 Psycho-therapeutics features
here in a titular sense – Felkin did not discuss the word itself in his book.
Already that same year, the term appeared in The Times, in a review of a play
by Henry Arthur Jones, Judah. In the play, the materialist Professor Jopp
unmasks the pretensions of a miracle worker, Vashti Dethic. At one juncture,
he says to her:
If you don’t know the secret of this mysterious power of yours, I’ll
explain it to you. These good folks whom you cure are all suffering
from different kinds of nervous diseases, where only volition is
required to make them better. Their faith in you gives the necessary
shock to their volition, and brings its powers into exercise. But in all
cases of organic disease I assure you you are as helpless as – any regular
practitioner; and that’s saying a good deal.19
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 5

The reviewer in The Times noted that Vashti Dethic’s performances

. . . are purely the result of that moral influence which is now beginning
to be recognized by medical men under the title of psycho-therapeutics
– the probable secret of many so-called miracle-cures effected by the
touching of holy relics, the visiting of shrines, the laying on of hands,
and other quasi-spiritual methods.20
We see here the view of psycho-therapeutics as a modern rationalistic expla-
nation of prior forms of healing entering into public debate.
In 1891, Bernheim himself took up the word ‘psychotherapy’ as the title
of his work, Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychothérapie: études nouvelles [Hyp-
notism, Suggestion, Psychotherapy: New Studies]. Here, ‘psychothérapie’
was employed without a hyphen. One may conjecture that it was through
translation that psychotherapists became unhyphenated. Bernheim argued
that:
It is enough to recall the considerable action of the moral on the
psychical, of the spirit on the body, of the psychic function of the brain
on all the organic functions. It is this action which the doctor must
utilise to obtain acts useful for the cure. To make the mind intervene to
cure the body, this is the role of suggestion applied to the therapeutic,
this is the aim of the psycho-therapeutic.21
The making of psycho-therapeutics synonymous with hypnosis and sugges-
tion meant that the word became widely disseminated. ‘Psycho-therapeutics’
rode on the back of the burgeoning hypnotic movement. For Bernheim,
the word ‘psychothérapie’ took on the same rational, modern, scientific
connotations as ‘suggestion’. Initially, there was no need to create a separate
designation of ‘psychotherapist’, as it was quite clear that psychotherapy was
practised by physicians.
During this period, there was great controversy concerning the use of
hypnosis by individuals who weren’t physicians. Ironically, a great deal of
the interest in hypnosis had been brought about by the tours of accomplished
stage hypnotists such as Hansen and Donato.22 At the 1889 international
congress for experimental and therapeutic hypnotism in Paris, a motion was
proposed to ban the use of hypnosis by non-medical practitioners. The
rights of the latter were strongly defended by Joseph Delboeuf, a Belgian
philosopher who practised hypnosis.23 The interest in hypnosis was not
restricted to the medical profession. Others who took it up included the
psychical researchers Edmund Gurney and Frederick Myers in England. By
helping to open a legitimate space for the practice of hypnosis and sugges-
tion outside of the medical profession, such figures played an important role
in the development of ‘lay’ psychotherapy in Europe and the subsequent
separation of psychotherapy from medicine.
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6 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

In 1889, psychotherapy featured as the title of a work by a French author,

Maurice Barrès. His work was titled Trois stations de Psychothérapie [Three
Stations of Psychotherapy] and consisted of three chapters: ‘A Visit to
Leonardo da Vinci (Homage to Analysts of the Self [Moi])’; ‘A Visit to Latour
de Saint-Quentin (Homage to Psychologists)’; and ‘The Legend of a Cosmo-
politan (Homage to Neocatholics)’. Barrès described his essays as ‘Treatises
of the culture of the self (moi)’. He wrote: ‘these small essays, in my view, are
for moderns, consolations in the manner in which the most precious of our
masters, Seneca, addressed, with an extreme elegance, the refined people of
his time who were so weary.’24 Barrès utilized the word in a quite different
sense than the psychologists here, and it did not refer to any particular
practice. For him, psychotherapy was a form of literature, a ‘reading cure’,
which consisted in stoical consolations for weary refined individuals.
Van Eeden and van Renterghem presented the work of their clinic at the
second congress of experimental psychology in London, held in 1892, which
created a great deal of interest. In retrospect, van Eeden credited himself for
coining the term ‘psychotherapy’.25 In his presentation, van Eeden indicated
the rationale behind the choice of the term:
In 1889 we chose psychotherapy as a collective name to refer to this
treatment, and we thus name all therapy which cures by the inter-
mediary of the psychic functions of the patient. The priority of the term
goes back to Hack Tuke.
We add the word ‘suggestive’ because suggestion – understood in the
sense of Bernheim – plays the principal role in our therapy.
We avoid the words ‘hypnotism’ or ‘hypnosis’ deliberately. As for
myself, I would prefer that one did not use these words when con-
cerning psychotherapy. The unreasonable use of these words ha[s]
given rise to preconceptions, to confusion and misunderstandings.26
He claimed that the association of hypnosis with psychotherapy had done
the latter much harm. Thus we see that for van Eeden, the use of the word
psychotherapy offered a neat escape from the controversies concerning
hypnosis. While the word came from Hack Tuke, the specific connotation
with which it was being employed stemmed from Bernheim. But could the
simple substitution of one word for another clear up the ‘preconceptions,
confusions and misunderstandings’? Van Eeden offered the following defi-
nition: ‘I call psychotherapy all curative methods which use psychic agents
to combat illness through the intervention of psychic functions.’27 This was
a pretty wide definition! What ‘psychic agents’ were was left unspecified.
Over the following years, the word became rapidly taken up and widely dis-
seminated. Part of the reason for this was that in contrast to hypnosis or
suggestion therapy, the word itself was not closely to tied to a particular
practice or theoretical conception. As a prefix, ‘psycho-’ presented itself as
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 7

sufficiently vague to be filled in however one chose. The rise of psycho-

therapy was not predicated upon any particular psychology or psycho-
pathology, or on specific conceptions of the relation of the mind to the body.
Indeed, one may ask to what extent the technical considerations of psycho-
therapeutic practices contributed to the promulgation and dissemination of
modern concepts of the psyche and mind.
In 1892, there was a debate concerning ‘Psycho-therapeutics’ in The
Lancet. George Robertson, a physician in Edinburgh, distinguished the
rational and scientific use of psycho-therapeutics by figures such as Bernheim
from the ‘unconscious and indirect’ use on a daily basis by family physicians.
He advocated its study, but noted that it was likely to have an uphill struggle
to gain recognition, as it was ‘unconventional and different from orthodox
practice’.28
During this period, controversies raged concerning hypnosis, which con-
tributed to its decline. The Salpêtrière school attacked the therapeutic pre-
tensions of the Nancy school. In 1887, Gilles de la Tourette argued that while
hypnosis had some therapeutic utility in treating the symptoms of hysteria,
its use in other cases could develop symptoms far worse than what one was
initially presented with.29 By contrast, Henrik Petersen claimed that:
. . . the hypnotism of the Salpêtrière has been the greatest enemy of
psycho-therapeutics by frightening both sick and well, and in this fact
is to be found the only valid excuse for doctors making such remarks
to patients as follows: ‘Do as you like, but never allow anyone to hyp-
notize you!’ Or, whenever a patient has been successfully treated by
psycho-therapeutics: ‘Well, well, the cure, as you call it, is only
apparent, as you will find out at your cost later!’30
Bernheim and the Nancy school had stressed that hypnosis consisted in
heightened suggestibility, and not in a separate state. In the early 1890s,
Delboeuf drew the radical conclusion that hypnosis did not exist, or, in
other words, that ‘the power of hypnotism consists above all in the very
word of hypnotism, because [the subject] does not understand it well’.31 The
dissolution of hypnosis had the effect of promoting the word ‘psycho-
therapy’. Delbouef noted ‘from the point of view of scientific exactness, the
term psychotherapy, or better still, of psychodynamic, is much preferable’.32
With the word ‘hypnosis’ falling into disrepute, psychotherapy offered itself
as a ready alternative. Unlike hypnosis, it was free of controversial conno-
tations. Having come to prominence due to the rise of the hypnotic
movement, the word ‘psychotherapy’ now benefited from the decline of
hypnosis, and through its capacity to be dissociated from it. But could one
say that subjects understood the word ‘psychotherapy’ any better? Was the
power of psychotherapy similarly bound up with the suggestive effect of
the word itself?
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8 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

In 1896, the Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus, Suggestionstherapie, Suggestions-

lehre und verwandte psychologische Forschungen [‘Journal for Hypnotism,
Suggestion Therapy, the Theory of Suggestion and Related Psychological
Researches’] changed its name to Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus, Psychothera-
pie sowie andere psychophysiologische und psychopathologische Forschungen
[Journal for Hypnotism, Psychotherapy as well as Other Psychophysiolog-
ical and Psychopathological Researches].33 This appears to be the first journal
to employ the term. ‘Psychotherapy’ had taken the place of ‘Suggestion
therapy’ and the ‘theory of suggestion’.34 In the following year, Leopold
Löwenfeld, an Austrian physician, published a Lehrbuch der Gesammten
Psychotherapie [‘Textbook of General Psychotherapy’]. What he had been
content to describe in 1894 as ‘psychic treatment [Psychische Behandlung] in
a wider sense’ was now described as psychotherapy.35 Löwenfeld commenced
by complaining that the works which had been put forward to the medical
public under the title ‘Psychotherapy’ had unfortunately been exclusively
concerned with hypnosis and hypnotic treatment.36 This gave the impression
‘that there was no other form of psychic treatment than the hypnotic’.37 He
differentiated hypnosis, as one psychotherapeutic method, from psycho-
therapy in general. For Bernheim and his followers, as psychotherapy was
identified with hypnotic and suggestive therapies, the history of psycho-
therapy was identical with that of the latter. In differentiating the two, it was
time to give psychotherapy a history. Löwenfeld argued that
Psychotherapy is no achievement of the modern age. If we look in
history towards the first beginnings of our art, it is clear as an un-
mistakable fact that among the different methods of healing which were
used at that time, psychotherapy is the oldest, and that it represents
the first and original form in which the practical art of healing was
exercised.38
He divided the history of psychotherapy into four periods: religious psycho-
therapy, Greco-Roman psychic therapy in medicine, the rational and profane
psychotherapy since the middle ages, and the era of hypnosis and suggestion,
commencing in the 1880s with Liébault and Charcot. In his retroactive history
of psychotherapy, what Löwenfeld classed as psychotherapy would previ-
ously simply be regarded as medicine. His long history of psychotherapy
could be said to have taken its cue from the manner in which Bernheim
reinterpreted prior medical and religious therapeutics in terms of suggestion.39
The question of the relation of psychotherapy to medicine – raised by its
nomination as a distinct entity unto itself – was henceforth a subject of debate
within medicine. In 1901, an editorial in The Lancet noted that a ‘London
Psycho-therapeutic society’ had been formed at the Frascati Restaurant
(which used to be in Oxford Street). This was possibly the first society
bearing this designation. The editorial expressed disapproval:
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 9

. . . we cannot help thinking that the gentleman responsible for the first
meeting having been held on April 1st was singularly happy in his choice
of a date. The idea of medical men, or of any other body of men capable
of exercising common sense, meeting on a common platform with the
so-called Christian Scientists, with the exponents of the Viavi system,
or with osteopathists is too ridiculous for words.40

Allowing that hypnotic treatment could have a value when carried out by
medical practitioners, the editor contended that he saw no need for a separate
‘psycho-therapeutic’ society, which would ‘open the door to fraud’.41
The meeting’s president was Arthur Lovell, and those present passed a
motion stating that ‘the time has arrived when a society for the systematic
study and investigation of the psychic and mental forces (such as Psycho-
Magnetics, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, etc.) should be established in London’.42
The society established a monthly organ, the Psycho-therapeutic Journal,
which carried its proceedings. The opening editorial stated that the society was
‘the result of a few interested persons to promote the study and consideration
of psychic and mental therapeutics in an enlightened scientific spirit’.43 It
noted that a distinctive aspect of the society would be the use of Psycho-
Magnetics, Mesmerism and Hypnotism, for ‘remedial purposes’. The editorial
regretted the fact that medical journals were critical of the movement, due to
the fact that it was not established by orthodox medical practitioners. In a
paper the following year entitled ‘Psycho-therapeutics and Science’, Arthur
Lovell proclaimed that ‘Psycho-Therapeutic ideas are not new to the world;
on the contrary, they are coeval with the human race’.44 While Mesmer had put
them on a scientific basis, he gave especial importance to the work of John
Elliotson, whose researches formed the ‘basis of the science’.45 Lovell placed
importance on experimentation, and contended that Baron von Reichenbach’s
experiments on the ‘odic force’ ‘are the very foundation on which the future
science of Psycho-Therapeutics will be based’.46 He concluded that ‘Just as the
nineteenth century was the age of electricity, so I believe the twentieth century
will be the age of Psycho-Therapeutics’.47 In 1903, the society changed its name
to ‘the Psycho-Therapeutic Society’. It held lectures, meetings, free treatment
days and courses in practical instruction, together with theoretical and
practical examinations. The following describes the instruction offered:

Practical Instruction: Members may attend when free treatments to the

poor are given. Those who desire instruction are given assistance in this
direction, and opportunities are afforded them, when capable, of
helping in the practical work of the Society under experienced
guidance.48

The classes offered covered medical clairvoyance, electro-therapeutics,

massage, and psycho-therapeutics. Initially, the society flourished, and by
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10 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

1906, it had 176 subscribers. The society appears to be the first non-medical
society offering formalized training in ‘psycho-therapeutics’.49
The disidentification of psychotherapy from hypnosis and suggestion
reached its apogee with the work of Paul Dubois, a physician in Berne. In
1904, he published Les Psychonévroses et leur traitement moral [‘Psycho-
neuroses and their Moral Treatment’], which was a very popular work.
Dubois launched a critique of suggestion, claiming that it only increased the
state of servitude of patients. Psychoneurotics needed to be immunized from
suggestion, so that they would accept ‘nothing but the councils of reason’.50
Patients needed to regain their self-mastery. In place of suggestion, he
spoke of moral persuasion. In his preface to the 1909 American edition of his
book, he referred to ‘Suggestive therapeutics, erroneously termed psycho-
therapeutics’.51 According to Dubois, it was Pinel who ‘first introduced
psychotherapy in the treatment of mental diseases’.52 Liébault and Bernheim,
and the whole magnetic and hypnotic tradition, were displaced. The impli-
cations were clear: psychotherapy was simply the modern form of moral
treatment.53
While Bernheim had stressed the application of suggestion – and hence
psychotherapy – to physical and what would today be classed as psycho-
somatic disorders, the purview of psychotherapy became increasingly
restricted to the ‘psychoneuroses’. Dubois argued that
Having eliminated the neuroses where somatic origin is probable, I
only conserve in this group of psychoneuroses the conditions where
psychic influence predominates, those which are more or less under
the jurisdiction of psychotherapy; these are neurasthenia, hysteria,
hystero-neurasthenia, the light forms of hypochondria and melancholy;
finally, one can include certain more serious states of disequilibrium,
such as vesania.54
The conditions noted by Dubois do not feature in contemporary diagnostic
manuals. Part of the longevity of psychotherapy as a profession has resided
in its effectiveness in ever formulating and catering for new disorders.55
This differentiation of psychotherapy from hypnosis and suggestion was
to prove extremely fortuitous for the fate of the word, as the latter went into
a rapid decline. Psychotherapy narrowly avoided going down with the ship.
In 1895, Jules Déjerine had instituted a method of treatment based on iso-
lation (the Weir Mitchell rest cure) and psychotherapy (understood as moral
treatment) in his service at the Salpêtrière. In 1904, two of his students, Jean
Camus and Philippe Pagniez, wrote up the results of this work. Significantly
enough, they commenced with an 80-page history of isolation and psycho-
therapy, which seems to be the lengthiest that had been undertaken up to this
point. Concerning psychotherapy, they wrote that it was difficult to give a
definition of a subject which ‘everyone understands but which seems
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 11

indefinable by nature’.56 Nevertheless, they put forward the following defi-

nition: ‘one should consider psychotherapy (medicine of the mind), as the
ensemble of means by which we act with the aim of cure on the sick mind or
on the sick body through the intervention of the mind’.57 If psychotherapy
was hard to define, they noted that it was harder to fix historically. Hence
they differentiated between the conscious manifestations of psychotherapy
and its unconscious use. They argued that both modalities went back to
antiquity, and arranged their history thematically under four headings:
psychotherapy by remedies, by which they meant ‘suggestion by medicinal
therapeutics’, psychotherapy by ‘the marvellous’ (understood as the inter-
vention of supernatural beings), psychotherapy by hypnotism and sugges-
tion, and psychotherapy by persuasion. If psychotherapy was nothing new,
the value of the present was one of ‘determining its mechanism of action, of
making its usage precise and of grouping together all the scattered rules and
indications’.58
In Camus and Pagniez’s work, the terms ‘psychotherapist’ [psycho-
thérapeute] and ‘psychotherapist doctor’ [médecin psychothérapeute]
featured prominently. They indicated the requirements necessary for being a
psychotherapist. First of all, they argued that one had to be a doctor to make
the necessary diagnostic discriminations. In addition, one needed to be
patient, good, to love one’s art, to be profoundly convinced of the efficacity
of one’s method, to be an observer, to know how to analyse a character, to
have had a wide worldly experience and to be a good judge of character.59 As
to the significance of this new figure of the psychotherapist, they wrote:
Today, psychotherapy in going back to the methods employed by
philosophers and by religious persons, speaks to reason and makes an
appeal to the collaboration of the patient. It no longer demands that the
doctor be a sort of priest of a science of initiates, but simply a gentle-
man, in the elevated sense which the eighteenth century gave to this
word.60
Thus the new science was to be art practised by gentlemen doctors possess-
ing 18th-century virtues.
These developments in Europe intersected with those in the United States,
where certain specific parameters came into play. The second half of the 19th
century saw the rise of the Mind-Cure movement in America. The instigator
of this was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. From 1838, Quimby took up the
practice of mesmerism. From this, he developed his own conception that all
diseases were mental delusions, and that they could be mentally healed. In
the 1860s mental healing schools spread throughout New England. Quimby’s
most well-known pupil was Mary Baker Eddy, who elaborated the doctrine
of Christian Science. In 1875, she published her bestselling work Science
and Health. As Eric Caplan notes, while Christian Scientists stressed the
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12 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

necessity of adopting their doctrine for mental healing to be effective, pro-

ponents of New Thought rejected this, and drew instead on the work of
Bernheim.61 In the United States, the rise of psychotherapy was made
possible through the Mind-Cure movement. Indications of this are given in
James Mark Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology from 1901:
the entry on ‘Mind-Cure’ gives ‘psychotherapie’ as the equivalent German
term.62
In 1906, a collaboration of clergymen and doctors arose at the Emmanuel
Church in Boston, which gave rise to the ‘Emmanuel Movement’. As Caplan
argues, this movement ‘was the primary agent responsible for the efflor-
escence of psychotherapy in the United States during the first decade of the
twentieth century’.63 In 1908, W. B. Parker published a multi-volume work
entitled Psychotherapy: A Course of Reading combining Sound Psychology,
Sound Medicine and Sound Religion.64 The title implied that psychotherapy
consisted of a combination of sound psychology, medicine and religion.
Richard Cabot, who played a prominent role in promoting psychotherapy,
wrote an article on the ‘American type of psychotherapy’. Cabot noted that
‘Mind cure is the English for psychotherapy’, oblivious to the English origins
of the word, and attesting to its prominence in the French- and German-
speaking worlds.65 For Cabot, it was the translation of Dubois’s work which
showed the American medical public that there was such a thing as ‘scientific
mind cure’. He presented the following definition and justification of the
term psychotherapy:
Psychotherapy means the attempt to help the sick through mental,
moral and spiritual methods. It is a most terrifying word, but we are
forced to use it because there is no other which serves to distinguish
us from the Christian Scientists, the New Thought people, the Faith
Healers, and the thousand and one other schools and all of the
accumulative knowledge of the past.66
Cabot saw the linkage with religion as the specifically American form of
psychotherapy.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the word ‘psychotherapy’ had
become firmly established, but it was not the exclusive preserve of any one
figure or school. It was viewed as ancient and resolutely modern. It was
variously adopted to refer to a variety of procedures, ranging from mes-
merism, hypnosis, suggestive therapy, moral therapy, Mind-Cure, mental
healing, strengthening of the will, re-education, the cathartic method, rational
persuasion, to general medical practice or the ‘art’ of medicine. Through
association with each of these, the word ‘psychotherapy’ was able to gain
circulation and prominence, and yet at the same time, it was able to be
perceived increasingly as a distinct profession. This set the pattern for how it
would come to be used in the 20th century. The use of the word gave an
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 13

appearance of novelty and innovation and brought a scientific aura – Tuke’s

new science – yet whether this actually reflected any far-going transformation
in practice is another question. The heterogenous configuration of practices
which sported the name psychotherapy foreshadows the plethora of psycho-
therapies which flourished in the 20th century.
To grasp the significance of Freud’s nomination of psychoanalysis, it is
important to set it in the wider context of the nomination of psychotherapy.
Freud’s word enabled the differentiation of his practice from a wider psycho-
therapeutic movement. Furthermore, through the elaboration of the Freudian
legend, Freud was figured as the founder of modern psychotherapy: and much
of what should be ascribed to the psychotherapeutic movement became
solely ascribed to Freud. In the 20th century, Freudian apologists rescripted
the history of psychotherapy as if it began and ended with Freud.67
After a period practising electrotherapy as a neurologist in private practice,
Freud took up the practice of suggestion and hypnosis. He initially utilized
the terms psychotherapy and psychic treatment to designate his activities. He
translated the second edition of Bernheim’s De la Suggestion et de ses appli-
cations à la thérapeutique in 1888 and the first edition of Bernheim’s Hypno-
tisme, suggestion, psychothérapie; études nouvelles in 1892. In so doing, he
contributed to the dissemination of the word ‘psychotherapie’ in the
German-speaking world. In 1893, Breuer and Freud announced a supposedly
new psychotherapeutic procedure, the cathartic method. In 1895, Freud’s
theoretical contribution to their Studien über Hysterie [Studies on Hysteria]
was titled ‘the psychotherapy of hysteria’. It was in the following year that
Freud first employed the word ‘psychoanalysis’ in the course of his ill-fated
papers on the seduction theory.
Contrary to general opinion, the word ‘psycho-analytical’ had been
employed prior to Freud. In 1979, Kathleen Coburn noted that the term had
been used by Coleridge in his notebooks. He had written about the need for
a ‘psycho-analytical understanding’.68 As Erling Eng noted, Coleridge
understood this as what was ‘needed to recover the presence of Greek myth
hidden with Renaissance epic verse, this for the sake of realizing a purified
Christian Faith’.69 While Coleridge’s diaries were not published till the 20th
century, the OED also notes a published use of the word in 1857 in Russell’s
Magazine: ‘[Poe] chose . . . the psycho-analytical. His heroes are monstrous
reflections of his own heart in its despair, not in its peace.’ Whether the word
may have been in wider circulation has not yet been established.
Freud’s first use of the word ‘psychoanalysis’ was in a paper in the Revue
Neurologique. His French neologism, ‘psychoanalyse’, appears to have been
directly modelled on the word ‘psychotherapy’. He wrote:

I owe my results to a new method of psychoanalysis [d’une nouvelle

méthode de psychoanalyse], Josef Breuer’s exploratory procedure . . .
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14 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

By means of that procedure – this is not the place to describe it – hys-

terical symptoms are traced back to their origin, which is always found
in some event of the subject’s sexual life appropriate for the production
of a distressing emotion.70

Curiously, Freud provides no definition, justification or extended description

of the term, but simply retroactively applies it to what he had been content
to describe in the previous year as a method of psychotherapy.
Pierre Janet was later to complain that Freud had simply appropriated his
work and the name of his procedure:

They spoke of ‘psychoanalysis’ where I had spoken of ‘psychological

analysis’. They invented the name ‘complex’, whereas I had used the
term ‘psychological system’ . . . They spoke of ‘catharsis’ where I had
spoken of the ‘dissociation of fixed ideas’ or of ‘moral disinfection’. The
names differed, but the essential ideas I had put forward . . . were
accepted without modification.71

Thus for Janet, ‘psychoanalysis’ was nothing but a copycat name for his own
‘psychological analysis’.
In 1894, Leopold Löwenfeld had noted that ‘a third hypnotherapeutic
method was recommended in recent times by Breuer and Freud’.72 Rather
than simply being a method of psychotherapy among others, or a ‘third
hypnotherapeutic method’, the simple stroke of a neologism served to
differentiate Freud’s procedure – at a linguistic level, if not on any other.
However, in calling his discipline ‘psychoanalyse’ Freud had contravened
German grammatical rules for forming compounds from Greek terms. The
correct form would have been ‘psychanalyse’. This grammatical howler was
not lost on Freud’s audience, and a number of figures such as Dumeng
Bezzola, Eugen Bleuler, August Forel, Ludwig Frank, C. G. Jung, Oskar
Pfister and Herbert Silberer referred to ‘psychanalyse’.73 Others, such as
Emil Kraepelin and Wilhelm Wundt, used ‘psychoanalyse’ in quotation
marks.74 As Horst Gündlach notes, ‘Freud’s contemporaries, friends and foes
alike, perceived the extra “o” in “psychoanalysis” as a trademark of ignor-
ance’.75 In 1910 Ludwig Frank titled his book, Die Psychanalyse.76 Bleuler
published a work under the title: Die Psychanalyse Freuds. Verteidigung und
kritische Bemerkungen [‘Freud’s Psychanalysis: Defence and Critical
Remarks’].77 In the 1912 edition of his Hypnotismus, Forel commenced his
chapter on ‘Psychanalyse’ by noting: ‘I write “psychanalysis” [psychanalyse]
like Bezzola, Frank and Bleuler, and not “psychoanalysis” [psychoanalyse]
like Freud, because of the rational, euphonic derivation. Bezzola quite rightly
draws attention to the fact that one also writes “psychiatry” [psychiatrie] and
not “psychoiatry” [psychoiatrie].’78 In the face of the linguistic correction by
colleagues and critics, Freud obstinately stuck to his original formulation.
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 15

The early history of the psychoanalytic movement can in part be written in

terms of how ‘psychoanalysis’ triumphed over ‘psychanalyse’.
In subsequent years, Freud would dissolve the initial linkage of psycho-
analysis with Breuer’s ‘exploratory procedure’, and periodically resignify the
term, ‘psychoanalysis’. For Freud, psychoanalysis was a word to be defined
and redefined as he alone saw fit. Its nomination preceded the determination
of its essence. His polemical history of the psychoanalytic movement had the
aim of policing the use of the word:
Psycho-analysis is my creation . . . no one can know better than I do
what psycho-analysis is, how it differs from other ways of investigating
the life of the mind, and precisely what would better be described by
some other name.79
As Freud saw it, the very survival of psychoanalysis depended upon main-
taining this singular power of nomination. For him, it was essential that the
word ‘psychoanalysis’ did not circulate freely, like the word ‘psychotherapy’.
Meanwhile, in 1917, Bernheim complained of the number of works that used
the word ‘psychotherapy’ that did not even mention his name.80 Paradoxi-
cally, it was the very success of the psychotherapy movement and the open
manner in which it developed that made psychoanalysis possible. The former
opened up a practical, theoretical, social and linguistic space without which
the latter would not have arisen.
One may conclude by asking, how much of the rise of the psychothera-
peutic and psychoanalytic movements was actually due to the success of these
neologisms? In the case of psychotherapy, the word enabled a heterogenous
cluster of therapeutic practices to be grouped together under one term, and
identified as a modern, rational, scientific discipline. Henceforth, an inver-
sion occurred by which these practices were regarded as forms or techniques
of psychotherapy. This conception was to prove extremely influential in the
20th century. Unlike the case of modern psychology, the formation of
modern psychotherapy was not accompanied by programmatic statements
and fervent debate concerning its rationale, aims and methods.
The identification of these disparate practices as constituting psycho-
therapy led to the rescripting of prior medical history in terms of this desig-
nation, and to the view that something like psychotherapy had always existed
under different guises. At the same time, it was maintained that the modern
form of it could be differentiated from prior practices as something superior.
Thus historiography came to play a critical role in the constitution of the
identity of modern psychotherapy. As we have seen, this led to competing
historical genealogies concerning its supposed founders. In the 20th century,
several of these have found their adherents, among practitioners and
historians.
The popularity of the term ‘psychotherapy’ led to the nomination of a new
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16 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

class of practitioner, overlapping with, but distinct from, the physician: the psy-
chotherapist, with lists of desired attributes and requirements. It also led to the
rise of specific forms of training and instruction necessary to obtain them.
In contrast to the predominantly ‘open source code’ of the psycho-
therapeutic movement, psychoanalysis was a ‘proprietary’ development,
which, moreover, went on to claim for itself much of the legacy of the
former. Freud’s nomination of psychoanalysis, initially to describe
Breuer’s cathartic method, and then his own evolving practice and theories,
enabled his work to be looked upon as something quite distinct from the
wider psychotherapeutic movement, and indeed, as founded by himself.
To what extent this impression accurately reflected the relation and indebt-
edness of his practice to other contemporaneous practices is another
question.
There is a conventional view of nomination which would suggest that one
has new ‘names’ for new ‘things’. The trajectories surveyed here suggest that
such a perspective does not do justice to the rise of ‘psychotherapy’ and
‘psychoanalysis’, and obscures the work done by these neologisms in foster-
ing precisely such an impression.

NOTES

1 Nietzsche (1974: §58).

2 Jacqueline Carroy has presented interesting reflections on the adoption of the
word ‘psychotherapy’ in the French context and raised significant issues not
pursued here (Carroy, 2000). The approach presented here is modelled after the
linguistic trajectories traced by Jean Starobinski. Unless otherwise noted, trans-
lations are my own.
3 Prior to this, the OED notes one reference to ‘Psychotherapeia’ in 1853.
4 Tuke (1872: 405).
5 Report of Dr Benjamin Franklin and other commissioners charged by the king of
France with the examination of the animal magnetism, as now practised at Paris.
6 ibid., p. 5.
7 Bucknill and Tuke (1879). Tuke likewise made no mention of it in his chapter
‘Progress of Psychological Medicine during the Last Forty Years: 1841–1881’, in
his Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles (Tuke, 1882).
8 Bernheim (1980[1891]: 16).
9 ibid., p. 18.
10 Bernheim, in Tuke (1892: 1214).
11 Petersen (1897: 126).
12 Tuke (1886).
13 Bernheim (1886: 218). Alan Gauld notes that in Italy, Enrico Morselli referred in
1886 to the ‘efficacia psico-terapica’ of hypnotism in his work, Il magnetismo
animale: la fascinazio e gli stati affini (Turin: Roux and Favele, 1886). See Gauld
(1995: 359).
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 17

14 Tuke (1880–1). Tuke reviewed the second edition of Bernheim’s book in the
Journal of Mental Science and did not comment on Bernheim’s appropriation of
his term.
15 Tuckey (1889: xi). Tuckey’s book was translated into German in 1895, losing the
hyphen in the process: Psychotherapie oder Behandlung mittelst Hypnotismus und
Suggestion [‘Psychotherapy, or Treatment by means of Hypnosis and Sugges-
tion’]. In the fourth English edition of his book in 1900, psycho-therapeutics was
relegated to the subtitle: Treatment by Hypnotism and Suggestion, or Psycho-
therapeutics.
16 See Ilse Bulhof (1981).
17 Van Eeden (1893: 97).
18 Felkin (1890).
19 Jones (1894: 59).
20 The Times, 22 May 1890, p. 6.
21 Bernheim (1903[1891]: 50).
22 On the significance of Hansen for understanding the case of Anna O., see Borch-
Jacobsen (1996).
23 See Duyckaerts (1990) and my ‘Hypnose, médecine et droit: la correspondence
entre Joseph Delboeuf et George Croom Robertson’ (Shamdasani, 1997).
24 Barrès (1891: xviii–xix). On Barrès’s conception of psychotherapy, see Carroy
(2000: 20–3).
25 Noted in Ellenberger (1970: 330).
26 van Eeden (1893: 97–8).
27 ibid., p. 99. In 1893, van Eeden himself vacated the field of psychotherapy. He
continued with his literary activities, and later became a spiritualist.
28 Robertson (1892: 657–8). As late as the 1920s, the hyphenated form, ‘psycho-
therapy’, was in use in The Lancet. At the end of the 19th century, the practice of
medicine was undergoing a transformation. See Bynum (1994).
29 De la Tourette (1887).
30 Petersen (1897: 142).
31 Delboeuf (1993[1893]: 421).
32 ibid.
33 Noted by Terry Tanner (Tanner, 2003: 81).
34 In a similar manner in 1910, the Revue de l’hypnotisme changed its name in 1910
to the Revue de psychothérapie et de psychologie appliquée [‘Review of Psycho-
therapy and Applied Psychology’].
35 Löwenfeld (1894).
36 Löwenfeld (1897: ix).
37 ibid., p. 10.
38 ibid., p. 1.
39 In the 20th century, there have been quite a number of such long histories of
psychotherapy. On the problems with such an approach, see my review of Stanley
Jackson, A History of Psychological Healing (Shamdasani, 2003).
40 The Lancet, 4 May 1901, p. 4292.
41 Collective organization seemed to be in the air: the same page bore the news of
the formation of a register for plumbers.
42 Introductory Notes, The Psycho-Therapeutic Journal 1 (1901): 2.
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18 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(1)

43 ibid., p. 1. On the place of this society within the larger context of popular
psychology in Britain, see Thomson (2001).
44 Lovell (1902: 2).
45 ibid., p. 3. In subsequent issues of the journal, the work of James Braid also
featured prominently.
46 ibid., p. 4.
47 ibid.
48 The Psycho-Therapeutic Journal 22 (1903): 64.
49 By 1912, the society was in decline, and the journal, which had changed its name
in 1907 to The Health Record, was independently carried on by the editor, Arthur
Hallam. At the 11th annual meeting in 1912, the paradox was noted that the very
success of the society had led to a widespread growth in psycho-therapeutics,
which had led to the society losing its raison d’être: ‘Many who have been trained
by the society have gone to practise and spread the truths of Psycho-Therapeu-
tics elsewhere, it naturally follows that treatment by our methods is not as difficult
to obtain as it was before’ (The Health Record 11(128) (1912): 74). When the
London Psycho-Analytical Society was established in the following year, it by no
means entered into a vacuum.
50 Dubois (1909[1904]: 221).
51 ibid., p. xiii.
52 ibid., p. 96.
53 A similar perspective was presented by Déjerine and Glaucker (1918[1911]). On
this question, see Gauchet and Swain (1994).
54 Dubois (1905: 19).
55 On this question, see Borch-Jacobsen (2002) and my ‘Claire, Lise, Jean, Nadia,
and Gisèle: Preliminary Notes towards a Characterisation of Pierre Janet’s
Psychasthenia’ (Shamdasani, 2001).
56 Camus and Pagniez (1904: 25).
57 ibid.
58 ibid., p. 26.
59 ibid., pp. 177–80.
60 ibid., p. 82.
61 Caplan (2001: 80). See also Taylor (1999).
62 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/M3defs.htm#Mind%20Cure.
In 1903, Richard Ebbard noted that ‘Thought-Cure’ was also used as a synonym
for ‘Psycho-Therapy’ (Ebbard, 1903). ‘Thought-Cure’ evidently did not catch on.
63 Caplan (2001: 199).
64 Parker (1908).
65 Cabot (1908: 1).
66 ibid.
67 A recent example of this is Joseph Schwartz, Cassandra’s Daughter: A History of
Psychoanalysis in Europe and America (1999). On Schwartz, see Anthony
Stadlen’s review in Arc de Cercle (Stadlen, 2003). On the constitution and main-
tenance of the Freud legend, see Borch-Jacobsen and Shamdasani (2001).
68 Cited in Eng (1984: 463).
69 ibid., p. 465.
70 Freud (1896: 151).
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‘PSYCHOTHERAPY’ 19

71 Janet (1925: 601–2). Janet appears to have taken up the word ‘psychotherapy’ rela-
tively late: it does not feature in his États mentales des hystériques (1892–4) nor in
his Névroses et idées fixes (1898).
72 Löwenfeld (1894: 688).
73 The significance of this issue was brought to light by Horst Gündlach in ‘Psycho-
analysis & the Story of “O”: an Embarrassment’ (Gündlach, 2002).
74 Noted by Gündlach, ibid., p. 4.
75 ibid., p. 5.
76 Frank (1910).
77 Bleuler (1911).
78 Forel (1911: 189).
79 Freud (1914) ‘On the History of the Psycho-analytic Movement’, p. 7. Psycho-
analysis was hyphenated in translation by James Strachey.
80 Bernheim (1917).

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

SONU SHAMDASANI is a research associate at the Wellcome Trust Centre for

the History of Medicine at University College London. He works on the
history of psychiatry, psychology and the human sciences, in the second half
of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. He has edited several
volumes and is the author of Cult Fictions: C. G. Jung and the Founding of
Analytical Psychology. His Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The
Dream of a Science was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003.

Address: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University
College London, 210 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. Tel: 020 7679 8100.
Fax: 020 7679 8194. [email: s.shamdasani@ucl.ac.uk]