Psychoanalysis was founded by Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who revolutionised our thinking about the human mind. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis is both theory and therapy, and his psycho-analytic theory forms the basis for many current psychodynamic theories. Freud was the first…

Born on New Year’s Day, 1879, in a village a few miles from Swansea, Alfred Ernest Jones first encountered the work of Freud in 1905. He became intrigued by ‘a man in Vienna who actually listened with attention to every word his patients said to him.’ This approach was new to Jones, …

Born an only child in Glasgow in 1927, Ronald David Laing often claimed that his parents were psychologically ‘peculiar’. His father had a breakdown when Laing was in his teens. Laing studied medicine at the University of Glasgow but failed his exams in 1951 and had to re-sit these…

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was born one of triplets in Zurich in 1926. About her early life in Zurich, she said in an interview, ‘In Switzerland I was educated in line with the basic premise: work work work. You are only a valuable human being if you work. This is utterly wrong. Half working, half dancing…

Katharine Briggs (1875 – 1968) had a life-long interest in human development and a particular interest in why people were different from each other. She witnessed differences in personality among the people around her and began formulating her own theories around the causes of…

Karen Horney (1885 – 1952) was a German psychoanalyst whose theories challenged Freudian views that were prevalent at the time, especially Freud’s views around sexuality. She did not believe in any inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, believing any differences were…