[1] He was one of the most influential teachers of psychotherapy in his time and he had been trained by a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
[2][3] Elvin Vavrinec Semrad was born on August 10, 1909, in the United States in the village of Abie, Nebraska.
He obtained training in psychiatry from what was then called the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, later renamed as the Massachusetts Mental Health Center.
"[2] He taught that psychoanalysis deals with defenses of repression, which are lifted by the technique of free association.
[1] Although the psychoanalytic treatment of schizophrenia is no longer supported by mainstream psychiatry,[6] the approach of Semrad in dealing with other forms of psychosis has been continued to be used in the early 21st century.