I was watching "Shakespeare in Love", in which Shakespeare goes to see a man whom he talks about his woes, and pays him for his time. The time is marked by an hourglass, and once his time is up, the man says "See you next week" or something similar. Which led to my question: when did the idea or profession of therapy begin, and how? Would Shakespeare have had access to such a person?
I answered a similar question about a month ago, although I can answer the Shakespeare aspect of your question I can answer the therapy part. So I'll post the relevant sections from my previous answer below:
Freud originally wanted go into Neurology however, in 1885, Freud was in Paris about to start a fellowship under Jean-Martin Charcot, a well known French neurologist at the time who was looking into Hypnosis. Freud would later remark that Charcot was pivotal in opening up his eyes to the burgeoning world of Psychopathology (as well as Psychology).
By 1886, Freud had setup his own clinic in Vienna where he wanted to employ the ideas of Hypnosis to his own theories. However his version of Hypnosis was a little different from the French variation as Freud had taken the advice of friend, Josef Breuer when Breuer had worked with a patient known as "Anna O". The method that Breuer used whilst talking to Miss O was to let her do the talking about whatever the symptoms might be under hypnosis.
["Anna O" was a pseudonym used by Freud & Breuer when discussing the patient "Bertha Pappenheim" in Freud & Breuer's paper Studien über Hysterie ("Studies on Hysteria")]
Anna dubbed Breuer's method herself as "The talking cure". Freud found that this talking cure seemed to be working, so he adopted it himself however without the need for hypnosis this time, to just let the patients talk freely. Freud named this "free association".
[I then go on to talk about Freud's cocaine addiction & how some Historians that said addiction was the cause for Freud's madcap theories, I shall not post those sections but if you wish to read them please check the original answer]
Freud's approach to "Free association" was to try & understand why the patients had certain "mental conflicts" that kept repressed memories within the mind. Freud developed three explanations to try & explain what these mental conflicts were doing & the effect it had on his patients:
"Transference" ~ Transferring the feelings you have for one person on to another without meaning. [N.B. This is still very common today especially in Relationship therapy where the patient can develop feelings for their therapist. The opposite of this is "Counter-transference"]
"Projection" ~ Where the patient projects their emotions & mannerisms on to others & attributes it to them. E.g. If someone was infidel then they'd blame the partner as the reason to why they did what the did. [N.b. This can also be linked to "Ego splitting" (basically "black & white thinking") where one will see things as all good or all bad. Sometimes the therapist themselves can be viewed by the patient in this light.]
"Resistance" ~ Stopping yourself from recalling certain thoughts or events.
When Freud was coining these theories, it is thought that he was having heart irregularities, distributing dreams & depressive episodes. This led Freud to analyse his own state of mind & develop his theory of "Neurosis".
Hopefully that helped somewhat, if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask:)
Sources & Further Reading: