sigmund freud biography in english

Sigmund Freud

(1856-1939)

Who Was Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who developed psychoanalysis, a method through which an analyst unpacks unconscious conflicts based on the free associations, dreams and fantasies of the patient. His theories on child sexuality, libido and the ego, among other topics, were some of the most influential academic concepts of the 20th century.

Early Life, Education and Career

Freud was born in the Austrian town of Freiberg, now known as the Czech Republic, on May 6, 1856. When he was four years old, Freud’s family moved to Vienna, the town where he would live and work for most of the remainder of his life. He received his medical degree in 1881. As a medical student and young researcher, Freud’s research focused on neurobiology, exploring the biology of brains and nervous tissue of humans and animals.

After graduation, Freud promptly set up a private practice and began treating various psychological disorders. Considering himself first and foremost a scientist, rather than a doctor, he endeavored to understand the journey of human knowledge and experience.

Early in his career, Freud became greatly influenced by the work of his friend and Viennese colleague, Josef Breuer, who had discovered that when he encouraged a hysterical patient to talk uninhibitedly about the earliest occurrences of the symptoms, the symptoms sometimes gradually abated.

After much work together, Breuer ended the relationship, feeling that Freud placed too much emphasis on the sexual origins of a patient's neuroses and was completely unwilling to consider other viewpoints. Meanwhile, Freud continued to refine his own argument.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory, inspired by his colleague Josef Breuer, posited that neuroses had their origins in deeply traumatic experiences that had occurred in the patient's past. He believed that the original occurrences had been forgotten and hidden from consciousness. His treatment was to empower his patients to recall the experience and bring it to consciousness, and in doing so, confront it both intellectually and emotionally. He believed one could then discharge it and rid oneself of the neurotic symptoms. Some of Freud’s most discussed theories included:

• Id, ego and superego: These are the three essential parts of the human personality. The id is the primitive, impulsive and irrational unconscious that operates solely on the outcome of pleasure or pain and is responsible for instincts to sex and aggression. The ego is the “I” people perceive that evaluates the outside physical and social world and makes plans accordingly. And the superego is the moral voice and conscience that guides the ego; violating it results in feelings of guilt and anxiety. Freud believed the superego was mostly formed within the first five years of life based on the moral standards of a person’s parents; it continued to be influenced into adolescence by other role models.
• Psychic energy: Freud postulated that the id was the basic source of psychic energy or the force that drives all mental processes. In particular, he believed that libido, or sexual urges, was a psychic energy that drives all human actions; the libido was countered by Thanatos, the death instinct that drives destructive behavior.
• Oedipus complex: Between the ages of three and five, Freud suggested that as a normal part of the development process all kids are sexually attracted to the parent of the opposite sex and in competition with the parent of the same sex. The theory is named after the Greek legend of Oedipus, who killed his father so he could marry his mother.
• Dream analysis: In his book The Interpretation of Dreams , Freud believed that people dreamed for a reason: to cope with problems the mind is struggling with subconsciously and can’t deal with consciously. Dreams were fueled by a person’s wishes. Freud believed that by analyzing our dreams and memories, we can understand them, which can subconsciously influence our current behavior and feelings.

Freud’s theories were no doubt influenced by other scientific discoveries of his day. Charles Darwin 's understanding of humankind as a progressive element of the animal kingdom certainly informed Freud's investigation of human behavior. Additionally, the formulation of a new principle by scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, stating that energy in any given physical system is always constant, informed Freud's scientific inquiries into the human mind. Freud's work has been both rapturously praised and hotly critiqued, but no one has influenced the science of psychology as intensely as Sigmund Freud.

The great reverence that was later given to Freud's theories was not in evidence for some years. Most of his contemporaries felt that his emphasis on sexuality was either scandalous or overplayed. In 1909, he was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States; it was only after the ensuing publication of his book Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916) that his fame grew exponentially.

Freud has published a number of important works on psychoanalysis. Some of the most influential include:

'Studies in Hysteria' (1895)

Freud and Breuer published their theories and findings in this book, which discussed their theories that by confronting trauma from a patient’s past, a psychoanalyst can help a patient rid him or herself of neuroses.

'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1900)

In 1900, after a serious period of self-analysis, Freud published what has become his most important and defining work, which posits that dream analysis can give insight into the workings of the unconscious mind. The book was and remains controversial, producing such topics as the Oedipus complex. Many psychologists say this work gave birth to modern scientific thinking about the mind and the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

'The Psychopathology of Everyday Life' (1901)

This book gave birth to the so-called “Freudian slip” — the psychological meaning behind the misuse of words in everyday writing and speech and the forgetting of names and words. These slips, he explained through a series of examples, revealed our inner desires, anxieties and fantasies.

'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' (1905)

While no one person will die without sex, the whole of humanity would without it — so sex drives human instincts, Freud believed. In this work, he explores sexual development and the relationship between sex and social behavior without applying his controversial Oedipal complex.

Wife and Kids

In 1882, Freud became engaged to marry Martha Bernays. The couple had six children — the youngest of whom, Anna Freud, went on to become a distinguished psychoanalyst herself.

Freud fled Austria to escape the Nazis in 1938 and died in England on September 23, 1939, at age 83 by suicide. He had requested a lethal dose of morphine from his doctor, following a long and painful battle with oral cancer.

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Sigmund Freud
• Birth Year: 1856
• Birth date: May 6, 1856
• Birth City: Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist best known for developing the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis.
• Writing and Publishing
• World War II
• Education and Academia
• Science and Medicine
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• University of Vienna
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Freud's book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams,' is said to have given birth to modern scientific thinking about the mind and the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
• Death Year: 1939
• Death date: September 23, 1939
• Death City: London
• Death Country: England

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Sigmund Freud Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/sigmund-freud
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 3, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
• Where id is, there shall ego be.
• Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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Sigmund Freud's Life, Theories, and Influence

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cara Lustik is a fact-checker and copywriter.

Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Psychoanalysis

• Major Works
• Perspectives
• Thinkers Influenced by Freud
• Contributions

Frequently Asked Questions

Psychology's most famous figure is also one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist born in 1856, is often referred to as the "father of modern psychology."

Freud revolutionized how we think about and treat mental health conditions. Freud founded psychoanalysis as a way of listening to patients and better understanding how their minds work. Psychoanalysis continues to have an enormous influence on modern psychology and psychiatry.

Sigmund Freud's theories and work helped shape current views of dreams, childhood, personality, memory, sexuality, and therapy. Freud's work also laid the foundation for many other theorists to formulate ideas, while others developed new theories in opposition to his ideas.

Sigmund Freud Biography

To understand Freud's legacy, it is important to begin with a look at his life. His experiences informed many of his theories, so learning more about his life and the times in which he lived can lead to a deeper understanding of where his theories came from.

Freud was born in 1856 in a town called Freiberg in Moravia—in what is now known as the Czech Republic. He was the oldest of eight children. His family moved to Vienna several years after he was born, and he lived most of his life there.

Freud earned a medical degree and began practicing as a doctor in Vienna. He was appointed Lecturer on Nervous Diseases at the University of Vienna in 1885.

After spending time in Paris and attending lectures given by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, Freud became more interested in theories explaining the human mind (which would later relate to his work in psychoanalysis).

Freud eventually withdrew from academia after the Viennese medical community rejected the types of ideas he brought back from Paris (specifically on what was then called hysteria ). Freud went on to publish influential works in neurology, including "On Aphasia: A Critical Study," in which he coined the term agnosia , meaning the inability to interpret sensations.

In later years, Freud and his colleague Josef Breuer published "Preliminary Report" and "Studies on Hysteria." When their friendship ended, Freud continued to publish his own works on psychoanalysis.

Freud and his family left Vienna due to discrimination against Jewish people. He moved to England in 1938 and died in 1939.

Sigmund Freud’s Theories

Freud's theories were enormously influential but subject to considerable criticism both now and during his life. However, his ideas have become interwoven into the fabric of our culture, with terms such as " Freudian slip ," " repression ," and " denial " appearing regularly in everyday language.

Freud's theories include:

• Unconscious mind : This is one of his most enduring ideas, which is that the mind is a reservoir of thoughts, memories, and emotions that lie outside the awareness of the conscious mind.
• Personality : Freud proposed that personality is made up of three key elements: the id, the ego, and the superego . The ego is the conscious state, the id is the unconscious, and the superego is the moral or ethical framework that regulates how the ego operates. Conflicts and interactions between these parts makeup one's personality.
• Life and death instincts : Freud claimed that two classes of instincts, life and death, dictated human behavior. Life instincts include sexual procreation, survival, and pleasure; death instincts include aggression, self-harm, and destruction.
• Psychosexual development : Freud's theory of psychosexual development posits that there are five stages of growth in which people's personalities and sexual selves evolve. These phases are the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latent stage, and genital stage.
• Mechanisms of defense : Freud suggested that people use defense mechanisms to avoid anxiety. These mechanisms include displacement, repression, sublimation, regression, and many more.

Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

Freud's ideas had such a strong impact on psychology that an entire school of thought emerged from his work: psychoanalysis . Psychoanalysis has had a lasting impact on both the study of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy.

Psychoanalysis sought to bring unconscious information into conscious awareness in order to induce catharsis . Catharsis is an emotional release that may bring about relief from psychological distress. 

Research has found that psychoanalysis can be an effective treatment for a number of mental health conditions. The self-examination that is involved in the therapy process can help people achieve long-term growth and improvement.

Sigmund Freud's Patients

Freud based his ideas on case studies of his own patients and those of his colleagues. These patients helped shape his theories and many have become well known. Some of these individuals included:

• Anna O. (aka Bertha Pappenheim)
• Dora (Ida Bauer)
• Little Hans (Herbert Graf)
• Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer)
• Sabina Spielrein
• Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff)

Anna O. was never actually a patient of Freud's. She was a patient of Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. The two men often corresponded about Anna O's symptoms, eventually publishing the book Studies on Hysteria on her case. It was through their work and correspondence that the technique known as talk therapy emerged.  

Major Works by Freud

Freud's writings detail many of his major theories and ideas. His personal favorite was The Interpretation of Dreams. Of it, he wrote: "[It] contains...the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime."

Some of Freud's major books include:

• "Civilization and Its Discontents"
• "The Future of an Illusion"
• " The Interpretation of Dreams "
• "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life"
• "Totem and Taboo"

Freud's Perspectives

Outside of the field of psychology, Freud wrote and theorized about a broad range of subjects. He also wrote about and developed theories related to topics including sex, dreams, religion, women, and culture.

Views on Women

Both during his life and after, Freud was criticized for his views of women , femininity, and female sexuality. One of his most famous critics was the psychologist Karen Horney , who rejected his view that women suffered from "penis envy."

Penis envy, according to Freud, was a phenomenon that women experienced upon witnessing a naked male body because they felt they themselves must be "castrated boys" and wished for their own penis.

Horney instead argued that men experience "womb envy" and are left with feelings of inferiority because they are unable to bear children.

Views on Religion

Freud was born and raised Jewish but described himself as an atheist in adulthood. "The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life," he wrote of religion.

He continued to have a keen interest in the topics of religion and spirituality and wrote a number of books focused on the subject. 

Psychologists Influenced by Freud

In addition to his grand and far-reaching theories of human psychology, Freud also left his mark on a number of individuals who went on to become some of psychology's greatest thinkers. Some of the eminent psychologists who were influenced by Sigmund Freud include:

• Alfred Adler
• Erik Erikson
• Ernst Jones
• Melanie Klein

While Freud's work is often dismissed today as non-scientific, there is no question that he had a tremendous influence not only on psychology but on the larger culture as well.

Many of Freud's ideas have become so steeped in the public psyche that we oftentimes forget that they have their origins in his psychoanalytic tradition.

Freud's Contributions to Psychology

Freud's theories are highly controversial today. For instance, he has been criticized for his lack of knowledge about women and for sexist notions in his theories about sexual development, hysteria, and penis envy.

People are skeptical about the legitimacy of Freud's theories because they lack the scientific evidence that psychological theories have today. Think about how challenging it is to study unconscious processes like dreams and repressed memories with the scientific method .

However, it remains true that Freud had a significant and lasting influence on the field of psychology. He provided a foundation for many concepts that psychologists used and continue to use to make new discoveries.

Perhaps Freud's most important contribution to the field of psychology was the development of talk therapy as an approach to treating mental health problems.

In addition to serving as the basis for psychoanalysis, talk therapy is now part of many psychotherapeutic interventions designed to help people overcome psychological distress and behavioral problems. 

The Unconscious

Prior to the works of Freud, many people believed that behavior was inexplicable. He developed the idea of the unconscious as being the hidden motivation behind what we do. For instance, his work on dream interpretation suggested that our real feelings and desires lie underneath the surface of conscious life.

Childhood Influence

Freud believed that childhood experiences impact adulthood—specifically, traumatic experiences that we have as children can manifest as maladaptive personality traits and mental health issues when we're adults.

While childhood experiences aren't the only contributing factors to mental health during adulthood, Freud laid the foundation for a person's childhood to be taken into consideration during therapy and when diagnosing.

Literary Theory

Literary scholars and students alike often analyze texts through a Freudian lens. Freud's theories created an opportunity to understand fictional characters and their authors based on what's written or what a reader can interpret from the text on topics such as dreams, sexuality, and personality.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis. Also known as the father of modern psychology, he was born in 1856 and died in 1939.

While Freud theorized that childhood experiences shaped personality, the neo-Freudians (including Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney) believed that social and cultural influences played an important role. Freud believed that sex was a primary human motivator, whereas neo-Freudians did not.

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis and published many influential works such as "The Interpretation of Dreams." His theories about personality and sexuality were and continue to be extremely influential and controversial in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

Sigmund Freud was born in a town called Freiberg in Moravia, which is now the Czech Republic. However, most of his childhood years were spent in Vienna.

It's likely that Freud died by natural means. However, he did have oral cancer at the time of his death and was administered a dose of morphine that some believed was a method of physician-assisted suicide.

Freud used psychoanalysis, also known as talk therapy, along with hypnosis and dream analysis, in order to get his patients to uncover their own unconscious thoughts and bring them into consciousness. Freud believed this would help his patients change their maladaptive behaviors.

Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and introduced influential theories such as: his ideas of the conscious and unconscious; the id, ego, and superego; dream interpretation; and psychosexual development.

Final Thoughts

While Freud's theories have been the subject of considerable controversy and debate, his impact on psychology, therapy, and culture is undeniable. As W.H. Auden wrote in his 1939 poem, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud":

In Memory of Sigmund Freud, Poem Stanza by W.H. Auden (1939)

For one who’d lived among enemies so long, if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us, he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives…

Grzybowski A, Żołnierz J. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) .  J Neurol . 2021;268(6):2299-2300. doi:10.1007/s00415-020-09972-4

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Boag S. Ego, drives, and the dynamics of internal objects .  Front Psychol . 2014;5:666. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00666

Meissner WW.  The question of drive vs. motive in psychoanalysis: A modest proposal .  J Am Psychoanal Assoc . 2009;57(4):807-845. doi:10.1177/0003065109342572

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Waqas A, Rehman A, Malik A, Muhammad U, Khan S, Mahmood N.  Association of ego defense mechanisms with academic performance, anxiety and depression in medical students: A mixed methods study .  Cureus . 2015;7(9):e337. doi:10.7759/cureus.337

Shedler J.  The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy .  Am Psychol . 2010;65(2):98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378

Bogousslavsky J, Dieguez S. Sigmund Freud and hysteria: The etiology of psychoanalysis . In: Bogousslavsky J, ed.  Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience . S Karger AG. 2014;35:109-125. doi:10.1159/000360244

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Gersick S. Penis envy . In: Zeigler-Hill V, Shackelford T, eds. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences . Springer International Publishing. 2017:1-5. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_616-1

Bayne E. Womb envy: The cause of misogyny and even male achievement? Womens Stud Int Forum. 2011;34(2):151-160. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2011.01.007

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Yeung AWK. Is the influence of Freud declining in psychology and psychiatry? A bibliometric analysis . Front Psychol. 2021;12. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631516

Giordano G. The contribution of Freud’s theories to the literary analysis of two Victorian novels: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre . Int J Engl Lit. 2020;11(2):29-34. doi:10.5897/IJEL2019.1312

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Biography Online

Sigmund Freud biography

Freud was born 6 May 1856  in Freiberg in Moravia, Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic) to Hasidic Jewish parents.

Freud was brought up in Leipzig and Vienna, where he attended a prominent school. Freud proved an outstanding student, excelling in languages, and English literature. He developed a love for reading Shakespeare in original English, something he kept up throughout his life.

At the age of 17, Freud joined the medical facility at the University of Vienna to study a range of subjects, such as philosophy, physiology and zoology.

Freud graduated in 1881 and began working at the Vienna General Hospital. He worked in various departments, such as the psychiatric clinic and also combined medical practice with research work – such as an influential paper on aphasia (1891) and the effects of cocaine (1894). Freud was initially an advocate of using cocaine for pain relief, though he later stopped advocating its use – as its dangers became increasingly known. Freud was also an early researcher in the field of cerebral palsy.

While working in different medical fields, Freud continued his own independent reading. He was influenced by Charles Darwin’s relatively new theory of evolution. He also read extensively Friedrich Nietzsche ’s philosophy. Other influences on Freud included works on the existence of the subconscious, by writers such as Brentano and Theodor Lipps. Freud also studied the practice of hypnosis, as developed by Jean-Martin Charcot.

In 1886, Freud left his hospital post and set up his own private clinic specialising in nervous disorders. An important aspect of Freud’s approach was to encourage patients to share their innermost thoughts and feelings, which often lied buried in their subconscious. Initially, he used the process of hypnosis, but later found he could just ask people to talk about their experiences.

Freud hoped that by bringing the unconscious thoughts and feelings to the surface, patients would be able to let go of repetitive negative emotions and feelings. Another technique he pioneered was ‘transference’ where patients would project negative feelings of other people on to the psychoanalyst. Freud himself wrote about the personal cost of delving into the darker aspects of the subconscious

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

Freud – Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)

Freud also placed an important stress on getting his patients to write down their dreams and use this in the analysis. Increasingly he used the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to explain his methods.

In developing his outlook on psychoanalysis, he also made significant use of his own dreams, depression and feelings from childhood. To Freud, his relationship with his mother was of particular importance – as a child Freud felt he was competing for his mother’s affections between his siblings.

Oedipus Complex

Another key element of Freud’s work was the importance of early sexual experiences of children. He developed a theory of the Oedipus Complex that children have an unconscious and repressed desire to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex. Freud felt that the successful resolution of this resolution was important for developing a mature identity and sexuality.

In 1899, he published ‘ The Interpretation of Dreams ’ in which, he criticised existing theory of dreams, placing greater emphasis on dreams as unfulfilled wish-fulfilments. He later applied his theories in a more practical setting, which generated a larger readership among the general public. Important works include The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901),  Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , published in 1905.

Group Photo 1909. Freud centre front

From the early 1900s, Freud’s new theories became increasingly influential – attracting a range of followers, who were interested in the new theory of psychology. Other important members of this group included Wilhelm Stekel – a physician, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler. All five members were Jewish . The group discussed new papers, but it was Freud who was considered the intellectual leader of the burgeoning psychoanalysis movement. By 1908, this group had become larger and was formalised as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

In 1909 and 1910, Freud’s ideas were increasingly being spread to the English speaking work. With Carl Jung, Freud visited New York in 1909. In an apocryphal remark – Freud is rumoured to have remarked to Jung on arriving in New York “They don’t realize that we are bringing them the plague.”

The trip was a success with Freud awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Clark University, Ma. This led to considerable media interest and the later formation of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1911.

However, as the movement grew, there were increasing philosophical splits, with key members taking different approaches. Carl Jung left the movement in 1912, preferring to pursue an ‘analytical psychology’. After the First World War, Adler and Rank both left for different reasons.

Freud 1922 (front left

However, Freud and the field of psychoanalysis continued to grow in prominence. In 1930 Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize for his contributions to German literature and psychology.

After the mid-1920s, Freud also increasingly tried to apply his theories in other fields such as his history, art, literature and anthropology. Freud is often considered to take a pessimistic view of human nature. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud declared:

“I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-men as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation…”

Nazi Persecution

In 1933, the Nazi’s came to power in Germany, and Freud as a Jewish writer was put on the list of prohibited books. Freud wryly remarked:

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”

The Nazi’s often burned his books in public. In 1938, Hitler secured an Anschluss of Germany and Austria which placed all Jewish people in great peril, especially intellectuals. Freud, like many in his position, hoped to ride out the growing anti-semitism and stay in Austria. However, in March 1938, Anna Freud was detained by the Gestapo and he became more aware of how dire the situation was. With the help of Ernest Jones (then president of the IPA), Freud and 17 colleagues were given work permits to emigrate to Britain. However, the process of leaving proved tortuous with the Nazi party seeking to gain ‘exit levies’. Freud needed the help of sympathetic colleagues and friends to hide bank accounts and gain the necessary funds. When leaving Austria, Freud was required to sign a document testifying that he had been well and fairly treated. He did so, with a dry wit, adding in his own hand: “ I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone. ” (1)

Freud finally managed to leave Austria on 4 June by the Orient Express, arriving London, 6 June. (As a footnote, Freud’s four elderly sisters did not manage to escape Austria, and would later die in concentration camps.)

For the remaining years of his life, Freud lived at Hampstead, England, where he continued to see patients and continue his work.

In 1923, Freud had been diagnosed with cancer (a result of his smoking habit). Surgery was partially successful, but by 1939, the cancer of his jaw got progressively worse, putting him in great pain. He died on 23 September 1939.

In 1886, he married Martha Bernays; they had six children. Martha’s sister Minna Bernays also joined the household after her fiance died.

On religion

Although of Jewish ethnicity, Freud rejected conventional monotheistic religion as being an illusion and just a necessary step in mankind’s evolution. However, in Moses and Monotheism , Freud acknowledged that religion had played a role in encouraging investigation into the unknown.

Legacy of Freud

Freud was instrumental in the growth of psychoanalysis. His theories have proved controversial, but have often served as a reference either for those who support Freud or those who take an alternative view.

But, despite the immense influence of Freud, his views are increasingly questioned by people who reject the importance he attached to childhood sexuality. Also, contentious is Freud’s idea that humans are afflicted by a destructive ‘death impulse’.

Others criticise Freud for his lack of scientific enquiry – rather trusting to his own judgement and intuition.

Freud’s worked on many female patients, and many of his case studies involve Viennese women. He famously remarked:

“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?'”

In the 1960s and 70s, the feminist movement was highly critical of Freud’s theory. Simone de Beauvoir criticised psychoanalysis in her book “ The Second Sex ”. In the Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan considered Freud to have a ‘Victorian view’ of women.

However, despite the great controversy surrounding Freud’s theories, many believe him to be one of the most original and influential thinkers, who spawned a range of different approaches to issues of the subconscious, personal relationships and dreams.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography Sigmund Freud”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net ,  23 March 2015. Last updated 15 February 2018.

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Who was Sigmund Freud?

Explore the life and work of the founder of psychoanalysis..

Sigmund Freud, c. 1885. © Freud Museum London

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis , a theory of how the mind works and a method of helping people in mental distress.

Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (today Příbor, Czech Republic) to a family of Jewish wool merchants.

Freud spent most of his life in Vienna, where the family moved in 1860.

It was in Vienna that Freud went to school, attended university, got married, trained as a research scientist and then a doctor, and developed psychoanalysis.

As psychoanalysis spread, Freud built up a global following.

When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, Freud was forced to flee. He died on 23 September 1939 at his home in London, now the Freud Museum.

Freud was one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century.

He developed a new vision of human existence – but in doing so he undermined deeply cherished cultural values and aroused immense hostility.

“I do not wish to arouse conviction; I wish to stimulate thought and to upset prejudices.” Sigmund Freud

Freud argued that human behaviour is largely determined by unconscious motivations that stem from childhood experiences, specifically encounters with love, loss, sexuality and death, and complex emotional attitudes to parents and siblings.

Because of their unsettling implications, Freud compared his discoveries to those of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who first discovered that the sun did not rotate around the earth.

Just as Copernicus showed that the universe doesn’t revolve around us, Freud showed that we are not even at home in our own minds:

“The ego is not master in its own house.”

Major works

Freud wrote prolifically about theory and technique of psychoanalysis, and its implications for how we understand society, culture, and ourselves.

His major psychoanalytic works include:

• The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
• Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
• Civilisation and its Discontents (1931)

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Sigmund freud: a life in psychoanalysis.

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Long before he developed psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud had already distinguished himself as a scientific researcher and physician.

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Sigmund Freud: The Father of Psychoanalysis

Neurological explorations, development of psychoanalysis, foundation of psychoanalysis, controversial theories, recognition and legacy, later life and death, legacy and impact.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia. At a young age, his family moved to Vienna, where he faced poverty, anti-Semitism, and academic setbacks. After graduating from medical school reluctantly, Freud turned his attention to neurology and psychiatry in an attempt to find greater financial success.

In 1884, Freud spent time in Paris studying under the renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. There, he was captivated by the treatment of hysteria through hypnosis. However, upon returning to Vienna, his hopes of establishing a reputation were dashed when his research failed to gain traction.

Desperate for financial success, Freud began treating patients with nervous disorders in his own private practice. Initially employing techniques like electrotherapy and hypnosis, he found limited results. In 1896, after experiencing resistance from a patient named Emma von N., Freud shifted to the "method of free association." This involved having patients speak their minds freely while he listened without interrupting or offering judgment.

Freud gradually developed the principles and techniques of psychoanalysis. He believed that unconscious processes, particularly sexual drives, shape human behavior and personality. He introduced couch therapy, limited sessions to 45-50 minutes, and adopted a neutral, non-interfering stance toward patients.

Freud's ideas sparked widespread controversy. His theories on infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and the id, ego, and superego were met with resistance and criticism. However, his work also gained ardent followers and began to gain popularity among intellectuals and artists of the early 20th century.

By the early 1900s, Freud had established himself as a leading figure in psychology. In 1902, he became a professor and opened his home for the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society's meetings. His fame grew through books like "The Interpretation of Dreams" and "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." In 1922, he was honored as one of five great geniuses by the University of London alongside Philo, Memnonides, Spinoza, and Einstein.

In 1923, Freud was diagnosed with oral cancer. Despite his physical decline and intense pain, he continued to write and theorize. In his later works, he explored the themes of death and human aggression. Freud died in London on September 23, 1939, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century.

Freud's legacy is complex and enduring. His theories on the unconscious mind and human sexuality have had a profound impact on psychology, philosophy, and literature. Psychoanalysis has become a widely practiced therapeutic approach, while its principles continue to shape modern understandings of human experience and behavior.

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Sigmund Freud

Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6th May 1856 to Jewish parents, Amalia and Jakob Freud, in a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire now in the Czech Republic. When Sigmund was three, the Freuds moved to Vienna. He excelled academically, developing a passion for literature, languages and the arts that would profoundly influence his thinking about the human mind. Freud became very interested in medical and scientific research, and went on to study medicine at the University of Vienna. While studying, Freud developed a particular fascination with neurology, and later trained in neuropathology at the Vienna General Hospital. In 1885, Freud travelled to Paris to study at the Salpêtrière Hospital with Jean-Martin Charcot, a famous neurologist studying hypnosis and hysteria. Freud was deeply affected by Charcot’s work, and upon returning to Vienna he started using hypnosis in his own clinical work with patients.

Out of these experiments in hypnosis, and in collaboration with his colleague Josef Breuer, Freud developed a new kind of psychological treatment based on the patient talking about whatever came to mind – memories, dreams, thoughts, emotions – and then analysing that information in order to relieve the patient’s symptoms. He would later call this process ‘free association’. Early forays into this new ‘talking cure’ by Breuer and Freud yielded promising results (notably in the famous case of ‘Anna O.’) A year before marrying his fiancée Martha Bernays, Freud published Studies on Hysteria (1895) with Breuer, the first ever ‘psychoanalytic’ work. In this book, Freud and Breuer described their theory that the symptoms of hysteria were symbolic representations of traumatic, and often sexual, memories. By 1896, Freud had abandoned hypnosis and started using the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to refer to this new clinical method and its underlying theories. The following year, Freud embarked upon a self-analysis, which he deemed necessary both as a means of expanding and testing his theory of the mind, and as an exercise in honesty and self-knowledge. This self-investigation led him to build upon his and Breuer’s original theory that neurosis was caused by early trauma, and to develop substantially his ideas about infantile sexuality and repression. In the coming years and decades, Freud’s clinical work with his patients – among them the famous ‘Dora’, ‘Rat Man’, and ‘Little Hans’ – would remain the basis and core of his work, and would provide the vital material for his continual advancement and refinement of his theory of the mind.

In 1899 Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. In this, one of his most important works, he described dreams as a form of wish-fulfilment, and asserted that: “[T]he interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” In his formulation, dreams were the result of the unconscious trying to resolve conflicts or express desires that, in our conscious minds, are not allowed to be acknowledged. He saw the preconscious mind as a kind of censor or bodyguard, only allowing unthreatening thoughts into the conscious mind. According to Freud, in dreams this censorship becomes weaker, and forbidden wishes can become visible to our sleeping minds, albeit in some kind of symbolic disguise or code. Freud believed these dream symbols were far from simple to interpret, often embodying several meanings at once. It was also in The Interpretation of Dreams that Freud introduced perhaps his most famous concept of the Oedipus Complex, and it was here that he first mapped out his topographical model of the mind. Between 1901 and 1905 Freud continued to elaborate and expand his model of human psychology, and he wrote two more very important works. In 'The Psychopathology of Everyday Life', he introduced the idea of ‘Freudian’ slips and ‘verbal bridges’, and in 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,' he delineated his early thinking about psychosexual development and infantile sexuality.

By the beginning of the twentieth century Freud’s ideas were drawing interest from several colleagues in Vienna. In 1902 a group of physicians and psychiatrists formed the Wednesday Psychological Society, which met every week in Freud’s apartment at Berggasse, 19. The original group was made up of Freud, Wilhelm Stekel, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolph Reitler, all Viennese physicians. By 1906 the group had grown to a membership of sixteen, including Carl Jung and Otto Rank, both of whom would go on to be highly influential psychoanalytic thinkers. At this point the group decided to re-name and establish itself as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Freud and Carl Jung quickly became close colleagues and friends, both fascinated and enthused by the possibilities of psychoanalysis. In 1909 they travelled, along with Hungarian analyst Sándor Ferenczi, to the USA, where Freud gave a series of psychoanalytic lectures. It was after these American lectures that Freud’s renown and influence began to grow far beyond the confines of the Viennese medical community. American psychologists and neurologists were galvanised by Freud’s new ideas, and within a few years both the New York Psychoanalytic Society and the American Psychoanalytic Association were founded.

A year after the outbreak of the First World War, at the age of sixty, Freud gave his ‘Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis’ at the University of Vienna. In them he outlined the key tenets of psychoanalytic theory, as he had developed them over the past two decades, including his ideas of repression, free association and libido. The lectures were published two years later, and went on to become his most popular publication. The year after the end of the war, in 1919, Freud examined soldiers traumatized by their experience of fighting. He did not write much explicitly about the psychological damage done by warfare, but it nevertheless influenced his thinking significantly, for example in his concepts of repetition compulsion and the death instinct.

In 1920 Freud suffered a personal tragedy when his daughter Sophie died from the influenza eviscerating an already war-damaged Europe. She was aged only twenty-seven when she died, pregnant, and a mother of two. Three years later Freud would also lose Sophie’s son Heinerle, his grandson, at the age of four. He wrote in a letter: “I have hardly ever loved a human being, certainly never a child, so much as him.” He said he had never felt such grief. The year of Sophie’s death, Freud published 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle', a paper introducing his concepts of repetition compulsion and the death instinct, and building upon his earlier description of the function and operation of dreams. It is in this work that he revised his theory that human behaviour is almost entirely driven by sexual instincts, instead portraying the psyche in a state of conflict between opposites: creative, life-seeking, sexual Eros; and destructive, death-bent Thanatos. In Freud’s formulation, the death instinct was an expression of a fundamental biological longing to return to an inanimate state. This new theory was not well received by most of his analytic colleagues in Vienna, though it would, in time, have a big impact on the thinking of several preeminent psychoanalytic thinkers, notably Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein.

In 1923 Freud published his important paper, 'The Ego and the Id'. Here he further developed and elucidated his model of the human mind, introducing his ‘Superego-Ego-Id’ formulation to supersede the 'conscious-preconscious-unconscious' structure described in The Interpretation of Dreams. In this year Freud also discovered a pre-cancerous growth in his jaw, certainly caused by his regular and liberal consumption of cigars. He nonetheless found himself unable to give them up, and likened his addiction to them to his obsessional collecting of antiquities. The growth later turned into cancer and would ultimately cause his death sixteen years later.

At the invitation of the League of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation at Paris, in 1932 Albert Einstein initiated an exchange of letters (for subsequent publication) with Freud, concerning the subject of war and how it might be avoided. Einstein and Freud had met several years earlier in Berlin, and were very interested in one another’s work. Only a year after this epistolary exchange, 1933 Hitler was elected Chancellor of the German Reich. In 1930 Freud had been awarded the Goethe Prize for his contributions to psychology and German literary culture, but in January 1933, the newly empowered Nazis seized Freud’s books, among many other psychoanalytic and Jewish-authored works, and publicly burned them in Berlin. The Nazis described this destruction as acting, "[A]gainst the soul-destroying glorification of the instinctual life, for the nobility of the human soul!” Meanwhile Freud’s comment on these barbaric proceedings was rather more ironic: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books."

As the Nazis gained power and territory, and their policies grew ever more flagrantly discriminatory, Freud continued to write and practise in Vienna. As the 1930s wore on, friends and colleagues encouraged him to consider leaving Vienna but, even after the Anschluss in March 1938 and the ensuing displays of anti-Semitic brutality, he showed no desire to move. Ernest Jones was very worried about this determination to stay in what was becoming an increasingly dangerous place for Jews, and he flew into Vienna soon after the annexation, determined to get Freud to move to Britain. Freud at last agreed and, after much financial and political negotiating with the Gestapo on the part of Jones and others, he and his daughter Anna left for London in June 1938. They moved into 20 Maresfield Gardens, in Hampstead (now the Freud Museum ), where Freud continued to write and treat patients, despite the painful advancement of his jaw cancer. In London Freud worked on his final books, Moses and Monotheism, and the incomplete Outline of Psychoanalysis. He was visited by Salvador Dalí – a passionate devotee –, his fellow Viennese writer Stefan Zweig, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and H.G. Wells.

By the autumn of 1939, the progression of Freud's cancer was causing him severe pain and had by this point been declared inoperable. He asked his doctor and friend, Max Schur, to euthanize him with a high dose of morphine, and he died on 23rd September 1939, not long after the outbreak of World War Two. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. Ernest Jones and Stefan Zweig spoke at his funeral.

Eleanor Sawbridge Burton 2015

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Sigmund Freud: Life, Work & Theories

Though his ideas were controversial, Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential scientists in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. It has been over 100 years since Freud published his theories, yet he still influences what we think about personality and the mind.  

Freud was born to a wool merchant and his second wife, Jakob and Amalie, in Freiberg, Moravia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on May 6, 1856. This town is now known as Příbor and is located in the Czech Republic. 

For most of his life, he was raised in Vienna, and he was married there in 1886 to Martha Bernays. They had six children. His daughter, Anna Freud, also became a distinguished psychoanalyst.

In 1909, Freud came to the United States and made a presentation of his theories at Clark University in Massachusetts. This was his first presentation outside of Vienna. By this point, he was very famous, even with laymen. 

In 1923, at age 67, Freud was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw after many years of smoking cigars. His treatment included 30 operations over the next 16 years, according to the PBS program, " A Science Odyssey ."

Freud lived his adult life in Vienna until it was occupied by Germany in 1938. Though Jewish, Freud's fame saved him, for the most part. The Nazi party burned his books throughout Germany, but they let him leave Austria after briefly confiscating his passport. He and his wife fled to England, where he died in September 1939.

In 1873, Freud entered the University of Vienna medical school. In 1882, he became a clinical assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna and trained with psychiatrist Theodor Meynert and Hermann Nothnagel, a professor of internal medicine. By 1885, Freud had completed important research on the brain's medulla and was appointed lecturer in neuropathology, according to the  Encyclopedia Britannica .  

Freud's friend, Josef Breuer, a physician and physiologist, had a large impact on the course of Freud's career. Breuer told his friend about using hypnosis to cure a patient, Bertha Pappenheim (referred to as Anna O.), of what was then called hysteria. Breuer would hypnotize her, and she was able to talk about things she could not remember in a conscious state. Her symptoms were relieved afterwards. This became known as the "talking cure." Freud then traveled to Paris to study further under Jean-Martin Charcot, a neurologist famous for using hypnosis to treat hysteria.

After this new line of study, Freud returned to his hometown in 1886 and opened a practice that specialized in nervous and brain disorders. He found that hypnosis didn't work as well as he had hoped. He instead developed a new way to get people to talk freely. He would have patients lie back on a couch so that they were comfortable and then he would tell them to talk about whatever popped into their head. Freud would write down whatever the person would say, and analyze what they had said. This method of treatment is called free association. He published his findings with Breuer in 1895, in a paper called  Studien über Hysterie (Studies in Hysteria) .

In 1896, Freud coined the term psychoanalysis. This is the treatment of mental disorders, emphasizing on the unconscious mental processes. It is also called "depth psychology."

Freud also developed what he thought of as the three agencies of the human personality, called the id, ego and superego. The id is the primitive instincts, such as sex and aggression. The ego is the "self" part of the personality that interacts with the world in which the person lives. The superego is the part of the personality that is ethical and creates the moral standards for the ego.

In 1900, Freud broke ground in psychology by publishing his book " The Interpretation of Dreams ." In his book, Freud named the mind's energy libido and said that the libido needed to be discharged to ensure pleasure and prevent pain. If it wasn't released physically, the mind's energy would be discharged through dreams.

The book explained Freud's belief that dreams were simply wish fulfillment and that the analysis of dreams could lead to treatment for neurosis. He concluded that there were two parts to a dream. The "manifest content" was the obvious sight and sounds in the dream and the "latent content" was the dream's hidden meaning. 

"The Interpretation of Dreams" took two years to write. He only made $209 from the book, and it took eight years to sell 600 copies, according to  PBS .

In 1901, he published " The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ," which gave life to the saying "Freudian slip." Freud theorized that forgetfulness or slips of the tongue are not accidental. They are caused by the "dynamic unconscious" and reveal something meaningful about the person. 

In 1902, Freud became a professor at the University of Vienna. Soon, he gained followers and formed what was called the Psychoanalytic Society. Groups like this one formed in other cities, as well. Other famous psychologists, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, were early followers of Freud. 

In 1905, one of Feud's most controversial theories, those about sexual drive, was published as " Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie  (Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory)." He theorized that sexual drive is a large factor in determining a person's psychology, even in infants, an idea he had touched upon in earlier works. He also developed the theory of the "Oedipus complex." This theory states that boys have sexual attractions toward their mothers that can create jealousy toward the father. 

Another of Freud's controversial sexual theories was talked about in his 1933 lecture titled "Femininity." The theory, which he called " penis envy ," stated that females become envious of penises as children, and this envy manifests as a daughter's love for her father and the desire to give birth to a son, because those are as close as she would ever get to having a penis of her own. 

Freud is often joked about for his propensity to assign everything with sexual meaning. A likely apocryphal story is that, when someone suggested that the cigars he smoked were phallic symbols, Freud reportedly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Some have called this " Freud’s ultimate anti-Freudian joke ." However, there is no written record that this quote actually came from Freud, according to Alan C. Elms in a paper published in 2001 in the Annual of Psychoanalysis.

There has been much arguing in psychology and psychiatry circles about Freud's theories during his life and since his death, which may just prove his ideas, according to some. "Freud discovered and taught about the unconscious mind and psychological defenses, including denial and repression," said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who studied under Anna Freud at her London clinic and practices Freudian psychoanalytic therapy. "So, in fact, in trying to deny Freud's insights, people are actually affirming them."

Additional resources

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Ego
• Encyclopedia Britannica: Id
• Discovery Magazine: The Second Coming of Sigmund Freud
• Bio: Sigmund Freud Biography Video

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Sigmund Freud (Psychologist Biography)

A 2002 empirical survey endorsed by the American Psychological Association (APA) ranked Freud as the third most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Who Is Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founding father of psychoanalysis. He believed that childhood experiences can impact adult life and help to shape our personality. Despite proposing a number of controversial theories throughout his career, Freud's influence on the field of psychology is profound. 

Sigmund Freud's Family Background

Sigmund (originally Sigismund) Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in the small Moravian town of Freiberg (now Pribor, Czech Republic). He was the eldest of eight children born to Jewish parents Jakob Freud and Amalia Nathansohn. Freud’s father worked as a wool merchant and had two adult sons from a previous marriage. At the time of Freud’s birth, the family was relatively poor and lived in a single rented room. Due to mounting financial struggles, they left Freiberg in 1859, and eventually settled in Vienna when Freud was four years old.  

Freud was taught to read and write by his mother and displayed superior intellectual ability from an early age. He loved literature and began reading works by Shakespeare when he was eight years old. He had a flair for languages, and learned to speak Latin, Greek, English and French as a child. He also taught himself Spanish and Italian.

Freud had a close, positive relationship with his mother and is said to have been her favorite child. He was given a bedroom for himself so he could focus on his studies, a privilege none of his other siblings received. His mother would often serve him his meals in his room.

Early Schooling

Freud’s first exposure to formal education came in 1865 when he entered a prominent high school at age nine—a year earlier than most of his peers. He was an excellent student and was constantly at the top of his class. He graduated with honors at age 17.

Educational Background

In 1873, Freud enrolled at the University of Vienna to study medicine. He completed his studies and earned his MD in 1881. Between 1882 and 1885, Freud worked in various departments at the Vienna General Hospital, including the Department of Psychiatry. He was appointed as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Vienna in 1885. In that same year, he received a grant to study in Paris under neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who trained him in the use of hypnosis to treat the condition then known as hysteria.

Upon his return to Vienna, Freud began his private practice, specializing in nervous and brain disorders. During the 1890’s, he became dissatisfied with hypnosis as a treatment method for hysteria and began focusing more on an approach he learned previously from respected Viennese physician, Josef Breuer. While Freud was still in medical school, Breuer began treating a young woman pseudonymously called Anna O. for symptoms of hysteria. Breuer found that if he hypnotized the woman and asked her to recall events that occurred around the time a particular symptom first appeared, that symptom would disappear.

Free Association

Freud adapted Breuer’s method by having patients lie on a couch with their eyes closed, and encouraging them to talk freely about the first time they experienced a particular symptom. Unlike Breuer, Freud did not hypnotize his patients but found this method—which he termed free association —to be quite effective. Freud later coined the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to describe his approach to treatment, as well as the theory underlying his approach.

In 1902, Freud and a small group of scholars formed the first organized group of psychoanalysts, which was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (later known as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society). That same year, he was promoted to the rank of full professor at the University of Vienna, a position which he held until 1938.

Freud's Theory of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is both a theory that attempts to explain human behavior and a form of talk therapy. Freud believed that childhood experiences help to shape one’s personality and can impact a person when he or she becomes an adult. The goal of psychoanalysis is to release repressed or pent up memories and emotions so that the individual in treatment can heal. This form of therapy involves bringing events that are in the unconscious or the subconscious to the conscious.

Freud developed psychoanalysis over the course of several years. As the theory evolved, it eventually covered a number of different concepts and mechanisms. To get a better understanding of what is involved in psychoanalysis and how the theory developed, it may be best to start with Freud’s view of the human mind.

Freud’s Model of the Human Mind

One of Freud’s most significant contributions to psychology was his model of the human mind. He believed the mind was divided into three regions:

• The Conscious  - this is the part of the human mind that contains current thoughts and feelings. Anything you are aware of and are focusing on right now is in the conscious part of your mind.
• The Preconscious (also called the Subconscious)  - this region of your mind is home to emotions and experiences that you are not currently aware of, but you can easily retrieve them from memory.
• The Unconscious - this is the largest and deepest level of your mind and it contains all the instinctual desires, primitive wishes, hopes, and memories that are outside of your awareness. According to Freud, the things in your unconscious play a major role in driving your behavior. As mentioned before, psychoanalysis aims to bring unresolved material from your unconscious into your awareness so that you can process them fully and heal.

Freud later suggested that human personality was also divided into three major categories. These are:

• The Id  - this is the most primitive part of your personality and it focuses on satisfying your most basic urges and instincts. The id develops during the early stages of infancy. It resides in your unconscious mind and is the source of libidinal energy. It is composed of two biological drives called eros (this is your instinct to survive) and thanatos (this is your instinct to destroy). Eros helps you to survive by directing processes such as eating, breathing, and sex which are essential for maintaining life. As eros is stronger than thanatos, people tend to have a stronger drive to live than self-destruct. When thanatos is directed outward to other people, it may be interpreted as aggression or violence.
• The Ego  - this part of your personality deals with reality. It ensures that the basic urges and instincts of the id are satisfied in ways that are safe, realistic, and socially acceptable. Freud believed that the ego develops from the id during the later stages of infancy. The ego resides in your conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.
• The Superego -- this part of your personality develops during childhood and focuses on morality and higher principles. It contains all of the standards and morals you have learned from your parents, family members, and wider society. The superego encourages social responsibility. It resides in your conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.

Pleasure Principle

According to Freud, the id, ego, and superego interact to create complex human behavior. How is that possible? Consider the id, which is driven by the pleasure principle and seeks instant gratification for primitive urges such as hunger and thirst. The id is vital for infant survival as it ensures the baby’s needs are met quickly. As only the id is present during the early stages of infancy, the baby will cry until its primitive needs are satisfied. There is simply no point in trying to negotiate a later feeding time with a hungry baby.

As the baby grows older though, he may realize that getting all his needs met immediately may not be realistic or socially acceptable. For example, he may get in trouble if he gets hungry and decides to eat a box of cookies before dinner. Freud claimed that the id tries to resolve this tension by using primary process thinking . This involves forming a mental image of the desired object (in this case it would be cookies or another type of food) which helps to satisfy the primitive need temporarily.

The ego develops from the id during the latter part of infancy and operates on the reality principle. It tries to satisfy the desires of the id in a socially appropriate way. This means the child will weigh the pros and cons of a particular behavior instead of acting impulsively. In this case, a hungry child who is stuck in class may think about pizza (primary process thinking) until he finally gets the opportunity to eat during his lunch break and satisfy his desire in a way that is socially acceptable.

The superego is the last part of personality to develop. Freud claimed that the superego begins to emerge when an individual is about five years old. The superego contains a person’s sense of right and wrong, and it holds all the ideals and moral standards that have been learned over time. It provides the guidelines for making decisions.

The goal of the superego is perfect behavior. As it wants the individual to behave in a civilized manner, it works to restrict the unacceptable desires of the id and tries to make the ego act on standards that are idealistic rather than realistic.

Freud believed that a good balance between id, ego, and superego results in a healthy personality. If someone has an id that is too dominant, he may develop into an adult that is impulsive or uncontrollable. As such a person wants all his desires to be satisfied right away, he may be more likely to engage in criminal activity than the average person. On the other hand, an individual with a dominant superego may be extremely moralistic and judgmental. As a result, this individual may hold himself or other people to standards that are unreachable.

Defense Mechanisms

The term “ defense mechanism ” was first used by Freud in his psychoanalytic theory. According to Freud, the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict with each other because each part of your personality has its own goal. A defense mechanism is a strategy used by the ego to protect against anxiety from unacceptable thoughts and feelings. It is an unconscious response that safeguards the individual from emotions or experiences that are too difficult to manage right now. In some cases, one or more defense mechanisms may prevent unacceptable thoughts and impulses from entering the conscious mind.

Common types of defense mechanisms include:

Repression  - the ego pushes disturbing thoughts out of consciousness and prevents them from coming back into the conscious mind. For example, a person who experienced sexual abuse as a child may have repressed memories of the abuse.

Denial  - overwhelming external events are blocked from awareness so that the individual refuses to believe or is not aware of what is currently happening. For example, people who are addicted to alcohol may refuse to believe that they have a drinking problem.

Rationalization  - the individual explains difficult feelings or unacceptable behavior in a rational or logical manner while avoiding the real reason for the feelings or behavior. For example, a student who fails a test may reason that the instructor did a poor job in teaching the topic.

Displacement  - the individual satisfies an urge or impulse by using a substitute object in a way that is socially inappropriate. For example, a man who is upset with his boss may come home and abuse his partner.

Sublimation  - the individual satisfies an urge or impulse by using a substitute object in a way that is socially acceptable. For example, an athlete who is jeered by the crowd may use his emotions to raise his performance during the game.

Projection  - the ego takes unacceptable thoughts or feelings and ascribes them to other people. For example, you may hate your teacher but you know these feelings are socially inappropriate. So you convince yourself that it is your teacher who hates you.

Regression  - the individual moves backward in psychological development in order to cope with stress. For example, an adult who is stressed out at work may start throwing tantrums like a child.

The 5 Stages of Psychosexual Development

Freud suggested that children develop through five distinct stages of psychosexual development . He believed that children focus on a different body part as a source of pleasure in each stage. This is one of Freud’s most well-known and controversial theories. The five stages he proposed include:

• The Oral Stage  (birth to 18 months) - the child seeks pleasure from the mouth (for example, sucking or feeding)
• The Anal Stage  (18 months to 3 years) - the child seeks pleasure from the anus (for example, expelling or withholding feces)
• The Phallic Stage  (3-6 years) - the child seeks pleasure from the penis or clitoris (for example, masturbation)
• The Latent Stage  (6 years to puberty) - little libidinal energy is present as the child has no sexual motivation
• The Genital Stage (puberty to adulthood) - the child seeks pleasure from the penis or vagina (for example, sexual intercourse).

Oedipal Complex

Freud also proposed that an Oedipal complex occurs during the phallic stage when children are roughly 3-6 years old. He claimed that children in this stage of development have an unconscious desire for their opposite-sex parent and feel jealous of their same-sex parent.

The Oedipal complex manifests as either an Oedipus complex in boys or an Electra complex in girls. According to Freud, a young boy will develop an Oedipus complex, become sexually attracted to his mother and view his father as a rival. As his mother shows affection for his father, the boy fantasizes about getting rid of his father and taking his place. However, the boy also develops a fear that his father will castrate him (castration anxiety) so he begins to identify with his father and adopt his attitudes, behaviors, roles, and values. This eventually results in the father becoming a role model for the boy as the boy develops his superego and learns his roles as a male in society.

Freud claimed that a young girl in the phallic stage will develop an Oedipal complex, become sexually attracted to her father, and treat her mother with hostility. The complex begins when the girl realizes that she does not have a penis and develops “penis envy.” She also blames her mother for her castration. However, fear of losing her mother’s love moves the girl to identify with her mother and adopt her attitudes, behaviors, roles, and values. This leads to the development of the girl’s superego as she learns her roles as a female in society.

Interestingly (and controversially), Freud suggested that the identification of a girl with her mother is less complete than the identification of a boy with his father. As a result, he claimed that the female superego is weaker and less developed than the male superego.

Freud believed that an individual must successfully complete each of the five psychosexual stages in order to develop into a healthy adult. If there is a conflict during any stage that remains unresolved, the individual may become stuck at that stage of development. For example, children who did not successfully complete the oral stage may demonstrate an excessive reliance on oral behaviors such as biting fingernails, eating, or smoking when they become adults.

Dream Analysis and Interpretation

Freud described dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious.” He believed that analyzing a person’s dreams could provide much insight into the thoughts, feelings, and memories that are buried deep within the mind. Freud viewed dreams as a way to see how the unconscious mind functions. He also used dreams to take a peek at what inappropriate thoughts lay outside of a person’s awareness.

Freud believed that the content in dreams could be separated into two categories called manifest content  and latent content . Manifest content refers to all the images, sounds, and events the dreamer remembers once he awakens. Latent content refers to the symbolic meaning or underlying wish that is hidden in the dream.

According to Freudian theory, the main purpose of dreams is to fulfill wishes. Freud believed that dreams change forbidden desires into less threatening forms. This transformation takes place via condensation (joining two or more ideas together), displacement (changing the person or thing we are concerned about into someone or something else), and secondary elaboration (putting all the pieces together to form a coherent narrative).When this is done, the anxiety caused by the forbidden desire is significantly reduced in the dream.

Applications of Psychoanalysis

There are three main applications of psychoanalysis. It is used to:

• Explore the human mind
• Explain human behavior
• Treat psychological or emotional issues during talk therapy

Psychoanalysis helps people in treatment to better understand the unconscious forces that influence their current thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This approach often involves eliciting emotional responses and helping individuals to overcome negative defense mechanisms. Psychoanalysis also teaches coping techniques so that people can address problems that arise in the future rather than fall back on unhealthy defenses. Individuals in therapy develop deep personal insight and learn how to deal with feelings that are difficult to process.

Although fewer therapists currently use psychoanalysis to explore human behavior or diagnose and treat mental health concerns, the approach is still well-known and hotly debated in the field of psychology. Freud’s work also influenced many younger psychologists who would help to develop the field, including Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Alfred Adler, and Anna Freud.

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis

One of the major criticisms of psychoanalysis is that the theory is highly unscientific. While Freud suggested explanations for human behavior, he was unable to predict behavior because his methods were not based on objective measurements. Freud developed the majority of his theories while working with a small sample of people. As a result, his theories may not be applicable to the wider population.

Some people who need mental health counseling may avoid psychoanalysis because it can be a very intense and personal treatment approach. Critics argue that the approach is too time-consuming (treatment may last for years), too costly, and is generally ineffective. Notable researchers such as Karl Popper and Noam Chomsky have repeatedly claimed that psychoanalysis is not based on empirical evidence. Some critics have suggested that Freud may have focused on information that supported his theories and ignored data that did not fit.

Sigmund Freud's Books, Awards, and Accomplishments

Sigmund Freud was a prolific writer and published a number of books on his theories. Some of his most important works include:

• The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1904
• Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 1905
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905
• Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1910
• Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920
• The Ego and the Id, 1923
• Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, 1926
• The Future of an Illusion, 1927
• Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930
• New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1933

Personal Life

In 1886, Freud married Martha Bernays after a four-year engagement and the couple had six children—three boys and three girls. One of their daughters, Anna, later became a famous child psychoanalyst and was instrumental in leading the Freudian movement after her father’s death.

Though Jewish by birth, Freud did not practice Judaism as an adult. He developed an addiction to nicotine at age 24 and smoked roughly 20 cigars a day. He tried several times to quit but was unsuccessful. He was diagnosed with cancer of the palate and jaw at 67 years of age, resulting in a series of over 30 operations. He experienced chronic pain during the last 16 years of his life.

Following Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, Freud fled Vienna, taking his wife and daughter, Anna, with him. The last 16 months of his life were spent in London, where he died on September 23, 1939, at 83 years of age.

American Psychological Association. (2002). Eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug02/eminent

Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An introduction to the history of psychology  (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Rudnytsky, P. L. (2002). Freud, Sigmund. (1856-1939). In E. Erwin (Ed.), The Freud encyclopedia: Theory, therapy, and culture . New York: Routledge.

Sheehy, N. (2004). Fifty key thinkers in psychology . New York: Routledge.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). (n.d.). Retrieved from  https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/freud_sigmund.shtml

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Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud is one of the biggest names in the field of psychology. He is commonly known as the “father of psychoanalysis.”

Early Years

Freud was born in Frieberg on May 6, 1856, which was part of Austria at that time. He was born to a Jewish couple – Jacob and Amalia. Sigmund was the first of their eight kids. His parents were experiencing financial difficulty when he was born. When Sigmund was nearly three years old, his parents moved from Frieberg to Leipzig first, and then to Vienna.

During his early years, Sigmund’s parents taught him at home. In 1865, the nine-year old Sigmund got admission in to a prominent high school. He turned out to be an outstanding student and he graduated from Matura in 1873 with honors. Sigmund was proficient in several languages, including German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Freud also loved reading William Shakespeare’s plays, which many believe, helped him in developing better understanding of human psychology.

Early Professional Years

After studying medicine from the University of Vienna, Freud worked as a physician and was successful at that. Sigmund started off his career at Vienna General Hospital. During the first three years, he worked in different departments of the hospital. He also worked with famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. During his work with the neurologist, Sigmund became fascinated with emotional disorder called hysteria.

Personal Life

In 1886, Sigmund married Martha Bernays, who was the granddaughter of the chief rabbi of Hamburg, Isaac Bernays. Sigmund and Martha had six children between 1887 and 1895. There were also unconfirmed rumors that Sigmund had romantic relationship with Martha’s sister, Minna Barneys.

Freud developed a habit of smoking at the age of 24. He started smoking cigarettes and then later on, he started smoking cigars. Sigmund believed that smoking helped in enhancing his capacity to work. Despite health warnings, he remained a smoker throughout his life. Unfortunately, he eventually died of mouth cancer in 1939. Sigmund had a long struggle with the cancer, signs of which were initially diagnosed in 1923. Sigmund had a painful time at the end and his doctor friend, Max Schur, convinced his daughter Anna to not keep him alive. They administered him doses of morphine which helped move along the process toward his death.

Work and Contributions

His psychoanalytic theories were based on the belief that developmental changes occur because of the influence of emotions and internal drives on behavior. Through his theory, he explained how conscious and unconscious mind works. He emphasized on the unconscious determinants of the behavior and effect of early childhood experiences.

Freud categorizes aspects of mind into three parts- Id, Ego and Superego. The id represents our earliest way of relating to the world, an unselfconscious desiring fulfillment of our basic needs. The ego is concerned with the conscious, the rational, and the self-aware aspect of the mind. The superego ensures the moral codes of the ego, when the conscience struggles with the concepts of right and wrong.

Dream Theories

Sigmund Freud’s dream theory is based on the idea of repressed longing – the desires that we are unable to express in a social setting. His most famous work – The Interpretation of Dreams – revolutionized the study of dreams. He believed that analyzing dreams helps in understanding the different aspects of personality.

According to Freud, nothing you do occurs by chance. Every thought is motivated by your conscious as some level. Dreams are the way to express your repressed feelings (urges and impulses). The Interpretation of Dreams was released in 1899, bearing 1900 as printing date, as he wanted his greatest discovery to be associated with the beginning of new century.

Psychosexual Theory

Freud described children as going through multiple stages of sexual development. According to him, these stages are labeled as Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital. In Freud’s view, each stage is focused on sexual activity and the pleasure received from a particular area of the body. His theories on sexual behavior provoked several controversies all over Europe. Some of his famous books on this and other matters include Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , The Future of an Illusion and others. Freud was awarded the 1930 prestigious Goethe Prize in Germany.

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Sigmund Freud Biography

Sigmund Freud was the man behind the concept and method of psychoanalysis, which was a means of delving into a person's inner conflicts that lie within the unconscious mind. This method is based on the understanding that people's fantasies and dreams say something about these problems that affect them in their daily lives. Freud also formed several theories that relate to the ego, libido and sexuality of the child, which are only a few of the other topics he studied and specialized on during his lifetime. Hence, Freud was regarded as one of the most influential and controversial personalities of the 20th century.

Sigmund Freud lived most of his years in Vienna, although Freiberg (a town in Austria) was his birthplace. When his family relocated to Vienna, Freud was only four years of age. It was in this city in Austria where he received a degree in the field of medicine, which was in 1881. A year after, he married and decided to practice his profession for a living. His main focus was on treating patients who suffered from psychological disorders, and this started his journey and preoccupation on studying human experience and instincts. He also worked with other scientists and scholars throughout his life, although he eventually formulated his own theories and developed a method for the treatment of psychological conditions among individuals.

Immediately after obtaining a medical degree at the University of Vienna, Sigmund Freud decided to work as a physician. He later expanded his knowledge by studying the works of Jean-Martin Charcot, who was a French neurologist. It was during this time that Freud developed an interest in the treatment of hysteria, which is an emotional disorder. Afterwards, Josef Breuer, one of Freud's mentors, introduced him to one patient's case study. The patient's name was Bertha Pappenheim, although she was simply known as "Anna O.". The patient suffered from various symptoms including paralysis, tactile anesthesia and a nervous cough. The two scientists discovered that Anna suffered from various traumatic experiences, which they believed had a significant contribution to her mental illness. Breuer and Freud encouraged the patient to talk freely about her symptoms and experiences. Since there was no known specific cause for Anna's difficulties, they simply allowed her to express her feelings and thoughts through talking. In 1895, the Studies on Hysteria was published, which was the outcome of their analysis on the improvement on Anna's condition by implementing the so-called "talking cure". Freud explored deeper into the human mind and sexuality, and this allowed him to publish several works including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and The Interpretation of Dreams . Both of these written works by Freud became known worldwide, but his study of the psychosexual stages left a more lasting impact on critics and scholars alike. His theory was also met with much controversy and skepticism, yet this has a massive influence on the field of psychology up to this modern era.

Contributions

Sigmund Freud mainly worked on formulating theories that impact the human mind, mental disorders and sexuality. His works provided a deeper understanding on abnormal and clinical psychology, as well as the stages of human development. Some of his scholarly publications included The Ego and the Id , Moses and Monotheism , Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , Studies on Hysteria, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Civilization and Its Discontents , and The Interpretation of Dreams . He believed that mental disorders were rooted to cultural differences aside from physiological causes, as presented in his case studies. Although Freud initially worked with Breuer, the two parted ways because the latter believed that much of Freud's preoccupations were on the sexual origins of neuroses. They were unable to settle the differences in their viewpoints, and this triggered Freud to go deeper into his study. He also published his work "The Interpretation of Dreams", and he maintained the belief that a person's dreams reveal so much about the inner conflicts within. While he may have refined his theories and gained popularity with his publications, his contemporaries agreed on the assumption that Freud was more focused on sexuality as one of the topics of his studies. Nevertheless, Freud's fame increased worldwide as he received numerous invitations to deliver lectures in various parts of the United States, beginning 1909.

Sigmund Freud admitted that he had gone through conflicts within himself, which started during his early years. His father's death had an impact on him, and he went through feelings of guilt and shame, as well. He recalled how he viewed his father as his rival to the love and affection of his mother, which caused him to develop negative emotions. He reflected on this experience he had as a child and used it as one of his basis and inspiration in developing the theory on infantile sexuality and the concept of Oedipus Complex. There were several theories that Freud established, which are still recognized even up to this day. He also inspired several scholars and scientists during his time. For instance, Charles Darwin's theory on the evolution of man had some fascinating links to the study of Freud on human behavior. Then, there was this scientific theory by Helmholtz, which referred to energy and its constant quality in any physical system. This was related to Freud's analysis of the structural components of the human mind. Thus, the theories and scientific works of Freud may have been criticized and praised at the same time by his contemporaries, yet these are evidences of his strong influence in the field of psychology. Sigmund Freud battled with a serious illness during the last years of his life. He developed oral cancer, which caused him to struggle physically and emotionally. In 1939, while he was living in exile in England, he requested from his doctor a lethal dose of the drug morphine to end his sufferings. This resulted to the death of this controversial and influential scientist whose works remain with us until this very day.