- 1856 Sigmund Freud is born at Freiberg in Moravia on 6 May.
- 1877 Freud's first publications on anatomy and physiology.
- 1886 Freud marries Martha Bernays. Sets up private practice in Vienna for patients suffering from nervous illnesses.
- 1892 Breuer's treatment of Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim) using hypnotic method.
- 1893-95 The publication of Freud's first "psychoanalytic" writings on hysteria (although he does not coin the term until 1896).
- 24 July 1895 Freud's dream of Irma's Injection. In a letter to Fliess, Freud comments that one day the event will be commemorated by a plaque: In this house on July 24th, 1895, the Secret of Dreams was revealed to Dr. Freud.
- 1897 Freud's self-analysis leads to his abandonment of the seduction theory of the neuroses, and the theory of the Oedipus complex.
- 1900 The publication of The Interpretation of Dreams; Freud's treatment of Dora.
- 1901 Freud publishes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Jacques Lacan born.
- 1905 The publication of Three Essays on Sexuality.
- 1906 Jung becomes adherent of psychoanalysis.
- 1908 The first international meeting of psychoanalysts at Salzburg.
- 1909 Little Hans and Ratman case studies; Freud, accompanied by Jung and others, delivers Clark Lectures introducing psychoanalysis to America.
- 1910 Formation of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA).
- 1911-15 Freud's analysis of Schrebel's Memoirs on My Nervous Illness appears in 1911; Freud writes "Papers on Technique".
- 1913 Ernest Jones inaugurates the British Psychoanalytical Society.
- 1914 The publication of Freud's "On Narcissism" confirms Freud's break with Jung, and begins trajectory towards his later theory of the ego, and the later metapsychology, Freud writes the Wolfman case history (not published until 1918).
- 1914-18 World War I
- 1915 Freud writes twelve "metapsychological papers", of which only five have survived.
- 1919 Melanie Klein begins analysing children in Budapest.
- 1920 The publication of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" introduces the notion of the "death drive" into psychoanalysis.
- 1923 "The Ego and the Id" is published, consolidating the later metapsychology of ego, superego and id.
- 1926 Klein moves from Berlin to London, on the invitation of Ernest Jones, and joins the British Psychoanalytical Society a year later.
- 1927 Publication of The Future of ait Illusion.
- 1929 Klein analyses "Little Dick", publishing her findings a year later.
- 1930 Publication of Civilization and. Its Discontents. Freud is awarded the Goethe Prize by the City of Frankfurt.
- 1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany. Freud's books are burned in Berlin.
- 1934-38 Freud writes the three essays comprising "Moses and Monotheism" as Europe lurches towards war.
- 1936 Jacques Lacan delivers a version of "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I" at the International Congress of Psychoanalysis (he redelivers a later version of the paper at the same Congress in 1949). Karen Horney publishes Feminine Psychology.
- 1938 Hitler takes Austria in the Anschluss and Freud goes into exile in London.
- 1939 War begins on 1 September. Freud dies of cancer on 3 September.
- 1939-45 World War II. Psychoanalysis's importance is underlined by American m ilitary physicians being required to know its basics after the United States enters the war in December 1941.
- 1944 Helene Deutsch publishes volume I of The Psychology of Women (volume II appears the following year).
- 1946 Wilfred Bion begins analysis with Melanie Klein.
- 1952 Lacan begins his year-long seminars in Paris, which he will continue until the year before his death. Ronald Fairbairn publishes Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality.
- 1953 Lacan delivers his "Rome Discourse", "On the Function and Field of Speech in Psychoanalysis", at the Rome Congress of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Rome. First year in which Lacan's annual seminar is recorded for later publication.
- 1954 First anti-psychotic medication, Chlorprozamine, is approved for psychiatric use in the United States.
- 1955 Albert Ellis coins the term "rational behaviour therapy", the antecedent of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
- 1959 Philip Rieff publishes Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.
- 1962 Lacan is expelled from the IPA.
- 1963 Lacan forms the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP).
- 1966 The publication of Lacan’s Écrits. Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Interpretation of Freud is published.
- 1967 Bion publishes Second Thoughts.
- 1971 Donald Winnicott publishes Playing and Reality.
- 1972 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari publish Anti-Oedipus.
- 1974 Luce Irigaray publishes Speculum of the Other Woman. Juliet Mitchell publishes Psychoanalysis and Feminism.
- 1976 The American Psychoanalytic Association boasts 27,000 psychoanalysts: psychoanalysis is at the peak of its institutional success.
- 1980 Lacan unilaterally dissolves the EFP, forming the École for “La Cause Freudienne”. David Burns publishes Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, which begins to popularize CBT in the United States. Sarah Kofman publishes The Enigma of Woman.
- 1981 Death of Jacques Lacan on 9 September.
- 1984 Publication of Adolf Grunbaum’s The Philosophical Foundations of Psychoanalysis, and Jeffrey Masson’s The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory: beginnings of “Freud bashing”, and popular decline of psychoanalysis.
- 1988 Prozac is sold on the US market, inaugurating the age of antidepressants and growing predominance of psychiatric treatments of mental illness.
- 1997 Mark Solms publishes The Neuropsychology of Dreams.
- 2000 One hundredth anniversary of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Formation in July of NPSA (The International Neuropsycho-analysis Society).