The psychodynamic approach to psychology was started and developed by Sigmund Freud who was born in 1856 and died in 1939. He was a Viennese doctor who specialised in neurological disorders and realised that symptoms which had no organic or bodily basis could develop into a real neurological disorder. The manifestation of physical symptoms without physical causes is known as hysteria. Freud became very interested in hysteria and began to search for psychological explanations for physical symptoms and ways of treating them. Whilst examining hysteria further Freud became convinced that unconscious mental causes were responsible not just for this disorder but for all disorders and even 'normal' personality.

Freud used hypnosis originally to investigate and treat the unconscious causes of mental disorders after he spent a year in Paris learning hypnosis from a neurologist named Charcot. However he soon dispensed with this form of treatment after coming to the conclusion...