Psychoanalysis and medical psychotherapy. The history of a fraught relationship.

From a largely sociological perspective the author traces the origins of an d interactive conjunctions between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Germ an-speaking Europe. He points up their common roots in medical neurology, t he initial recourse to the arsenal of techniques based on hypnosis and sugg estion, and the upsurge of professionalization triggered initially by the o rientation toward Freudian psychoanalysis and later (notably in the Nazi er a) by its dethronement.