It was in this period that heroin was developed, as a safer alternative to morphine. Freud recommended heroin for this use, as it was believed to be less addictive. One of his friends followed his advice and became addicted to heroin. That was the times, and he did seem to be able to learn from that mistake.

Freud did have issues of his own, and I feel that a lot of his theory is based on his own experience. This really isn't uncommon at all, as most of the best theories deal with things that the theorist experienced.

Another paragraph from Ewen (p.13):

"Freud's own life provide him with a great deal of psychological data. He was himself Oedipal, had powerful unconscious hostility towards his father, and was quite close to his mother (who was some nineteen years younger than her husband and devoted to her "golden Sigi"). Freud suffered from a severe neurosis during the 1890s yet did strikingly original work during this time, as though the pressure of his own emerging psychopathology drove him to new heights. Ellenberger has described this syndrome as a "creative illness." The sufferer undergoes agonizing symptoms that alternately worsen and improve, exaggerated feelings of isolation, and intense self-absorption, and emerges from this ordeal with a permanently transformed personality and the conviction of having discovered profound new truths. During this period Freud also began his self-analysis (1897), probing the depths of his own mind with the psychological techniques that he developed. Though his creative illness ended by 1900, he continued the self-analysis for the remainder of his life and reserved the last half-hour of each day for this purpose."

<font color=orange>"If a light beckons to you, follow it. If it leads you into the quagmire, you'll probably find your way out of it again; but if you don't follow it, you'll be plagued for the rest of your life by the thought that perhaps it was your star." Friedrich Hebbet</font color=orange>