While working at this hospital, Freud began pursuing medical applications for cocaine. In 1884, he began studying the physiological effects of the drug, and believed it could have great applications. He noticed that it increased energy, created euphoria, and decreased pain. Freud believed that cocaine could be used to treat morphine addiction, depression, and could even be used in surgery. The most successful application that he found for it was to numb the eye during surgery. He was encouraged to stop his research after it was discovered that cocaine was extremely addictive in 1886. However, Freud's cocaine use did lead to problems for him later in life (Jones, 1953, p. 80-96).
Freud worked at the Vienna General Hospital until he married Martha Bernays in 1886. Shortly after he married, he set up a private practice for the treatment of psychological and neurological disorders with the assistance of his mentor and friend Joseph Breuer. This practice provided him with many of the case studies and clinical experience that he based his theories upon later (Boeree, 1997; Thorton 2001).
Perhaps one of the most influential events on Freud's future work was his interaction with one of Breuer's patients, who was known under the pseudonym of Anna O. Anna displayed a variety of physical symptoms that had no physical basis, such as a bad cough and speech difficulties. At the same time that she was experiencing these symptoms, she was spending most of her time caring for her sick father. When her father died, her symptoms increased and worsened. Breuer diagnosed her with hysteria, and her treatment involved what he called catharsis. Eventually, catharsis was integrated into Freud's psychoanalytic treatment. Breuer and Freud noticed that by talking about or remembering a root event to one of her symptoms, the symptom usually went away. They eventually wrote a book on hysteria, stating that it: .
"is the result of a traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated into the person's understanding of the world.
