Why did Freud's patients lie on a couch? Created with Sketch. In psychoanalysis, having the patient lie on a couch during sessions—not looking directly at the therapist—is thought to make it ...

Sigmund Freud was inspired to use the couch more than a century ago after observing dramatic hypnotherapy demonstrations by his teacher Jean-Martin Charcot. In psychoanalysis, Freud thought a ...