Freud's creation of psychoanalysis is the starting place for a great many forms of contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy, despite the fact that his work is very much a mixture of brilliant insights and misconceptions. Here, I will attempt to describe both the valuable contributions and the wrong turns, and to show how both can be understood in terms of the traumas he suffered as a child, as well as his particular adaptations to them. A review of his treatment of a number of patients will illustrate this discussion.