Claparède studied science and medicine, receiving in 1897 an MD from the University of Geneva, and working 1897–98 at La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.

Claparède performed an influential experiment demonstrating how the trauma of a painful event could be retained even if short-term memory was lost.

But when Claparède went to shake her hand, he found that she hesitated, recognizing a threat when her memory had been severely damaged.

[6] Claparède was briefly a member of the Zurich Freud Group marshalled by C. G. Jung,[7] but he shunned what he saw as the movement's dogmatism, and in 1909 joined Pierre Janet in differentiating the clinical concept of the subconscious from what was termed Freud's philosophical concept of the unconscious.

[8] However he retained an interest in psychoanalysis in general, and in 1926 provided an introduction to the first French translation of Freud's Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis.