Psychotherapy was started in the west in 1886 by Sigmund Freud, the first modern psychotherapist. Freud was a medical doctor who was trained in neurology. He became certain that hidden thoughts in the brain (which he called the Unconscious) could cause physical symptoms and strange behavior in some people. He believed that human behavior was not all caused by the brain, but by things that happened to people when they were babies and young children. His research of this theory -the idea he had- led him to create "talking therapy" , where he tried to figure out what could cause the mind to do things like this. Freud thought that his figuring things out and telling the patients what had caused the behavior would cure the patient. Unfortunately, it usually made no lasting changes. 