The talking cure was invented in the 1890s, and a new profession followed.
The word "psychotherapy" was coined in 1887 by Frederick van Eeden, a Dutch physician and writer, in an article describing the use of suggestion and hypnosis in treating patients.1 The word combined Greek psyche (soul or mind) with therapeia (healing or treatment). Van Eeden used it to distinguish a method of treating illness through the mind from treatments that acted on the body.
The practice gained its most famous formulation through Sigmund Freud, who developed psychoanalysis in Vienna during the 1890s. Freud's method, rooted in free association and the interpretation of unconscious material, was the first systematic attempt to treat psychological distress through sustained conversation between a trained practitioner and a patient.2
Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician who collaborated with Freud, had treated a patient known as Anna O. beginning in 1880 using what she herself called "the talking cure," a phrase that stuck.3 Their joint publication, Studies on Hysteria (1895), is considered a founding text of psychotherapy as a practice.
The psychotherapist as a distinct professional role emerged gradually over the twentieth century. Freud trained psychoanalysts, Carl Jung developed analytical psychology, Alfred Adler created individual psychology, and by midcentury, dozens of therapeutic approaches had branched from these roots.4
Unlike medicine or law, psychotherapy had no single licensing framework for most of its history. Practitioners included psychiatrists (medical doctors with additional training), psychologists (holders of doctoral degrees in psychology), clinical social workers, and counselors with varying credentials. Licensing requirements varied widely by country and jurisdiction.5
The American Psychological Association reported in 2022 that demand for mental health services had surged following the pandemic, with psychologists reporting increases in patient volume for anxiety, depression, and trauma-related disorders.6 The profession invented in the 1890s to treat what Freud called nervous illness now serves a population in which one in eight people worldwide lives with a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization.