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A historical review of the clinical evidence from which the basic concepts of psychoanalysis were derived must begin with Studies on Hysteria. A schema developed by Waelder for classifying the propositions of a clinical science according to their degree of remoteness from the data of observation has been utilized in reducing Studies on Hysteria into a series of discrete statements. All these statements have been cross-correlated, yielding a complex chart demonstrating which propositions at higher levels of abstraction could have been derived by induction from the clinical evidence presented and from the intermediate interpretations and generalizations based upon it.
This method has been found useful in studying the scientific styles of the authors of the Studies and may contribute to the understanding of scientific creativity in our field. We have found that in this work the styles of the two authors are divergent and complementary. Breuer displayed great freedom in hypothesis building based on deductive reasoning, while Freud subjected his inspirational hunches to thorough inductive revision in the light of the clinical evidence available to him.