The author offers a first-person account of the psychoanalytic movement's development, recounting early therapeutic practices such as the cathartic method and hypnosis, the subsequent shift to free association and interpretive techniques, and key theoretical notions like the unconscious and symptom conversion. He describes internal debates, departures of colleagues, and external criticism from the medical community, outlines how the approach spread institutionally and internationally, and reflects on his own role in naming, shaping, and defending the method while clarifying its aims and methodological foundations.