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Empirical proof of the existence of an unconscious was in the first instance an achievement of hypnosis (Bernheim's post-hypnotic experiment). This fundamental fact has formed the basis of psycho-analytic theory, but only through the practice of psycho-analytic technique has the full implication of this discovery been realized and its importance for the understanding of mental life been established.
The first formulations of psycho-analytic theory, embodied in the Studien über Hysterie by Breuer and Freud, are essentially based on the insight gained by the help of hypnotic technique. Hence the first question to be asked about the inter-relations of theory and technique is this: why was it that after this initial step hypnosis was incapable of contributing anything more towards advancing our theory? Or, to express the same idea in positive terms: why was it inevitable that a technique independent of hypnosis should be built up on this first theoretical principle?
The very first glance suffices to convince us that in hypnosis enormous quantities of libido are mobilized. The submissive attitude towards a comparative stranger, the amazing capacity for passing at his will into a different state of consciousness, even the possibility of somatic alterations—all these things prove what powerful libidinal disturbances must be brought about in the hypnotized subject, by means of the hypnotic situation and the personality of the hypnotist. Yet these processes take place, in both persons concerned, entirely within the same system of the mind, that is to say, the processes remain unconscious. That both cause and effect are confined to the unconscious in the active partner (the hypnotist) also is evident from his helplessness in respect of his own technique. He employs 'instinctively' now one weapon, now another, and he can never explain why in one case he meets with success and in another with failure. In fact what the hypnotist knows of his art, what he consciously does