Freud and his followers

pp. 123-166

in: Peter Langford, Modern philosophies of human nature, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Freud's role in the history of psychiatry was to be one of the first to develop a non-Christian, secular approach to therapy. The French psychiatrist Pierre Janet also accomplished this task quite independently of Freud at the end of the nineteenth century, though his work declined in influence rapidly after his death in 1947. Previous to the time of Freud and Janet psychotherapy conducted by the laying on of hands and other methods had been widely practiced by Christianity under the rubric of casting out devils and spirits. Such therapy naturally had a strongly theological underpinning.