Life and His Work

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician and founder of psychoanalysis. Through his skill as a scientist, physician, and writer, he created an entirely new approach to the understanding of human personality by bringing together ideas prevalent at the time, along with his own observation and study, into a major theory of psychology. Most importantly, he applied these ideas to medical practice in the treatment of mental disorders. These newly created psychotherapy treatments and procedures, many of which in modified form are applied today, were based on his understanding of unconscious thought processes and their relationship to neurotic symptoms. Regarded with scepticism at the time, Freud’s ideas have waxed and waned in acceptance ever since. Nevertheless, he remains regarded as one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century.
Freud was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic) on May 6, 1856. When he was three years old, the family was forced to flee riots that characterized the strong anti-Semitic feeling that prevailed within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After a brief period in Leipzig the family settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life. At school the young Freud was at first drawn towards study of the law, but on reading the work of Charles Darwin he became intrigued by the rapidly developing sciences of the day. Especially inspired by the scientific investigations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he decided to become a medical student based on his having heard Goethe’s essay on nature read aloud shortly before he left school.

Freud’s medical education began in Vienna in 1873 when he was 17. At 20, he was drawn to further study of the central nervous system under the tutelage of the German neurologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. This delayed his graduation in medicine until 1881, by which time he was 25 and had also completed a year of compulsory military service. He remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiology laboratory continuing his wide-ranging studies, which included researches into the drug cocaine, and the condition of cerebral palsy. He explored the neurophysiology of aphasia and agnosia, terms he applied to the neurological disorders of communication and recognition. Largely at von Brücke’s insistence, Freud relinquished his research interests temporarily to gain clinical experience in psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous diseases, as resident physician to the General Hospital of Vienna. After three years he was to return to the university, where he was appointed lecturer in neuropathology.
His contributions included The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1902), Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious (1905), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), in which he added further revisions to his theory, The Ego and the Id (1923), and Moses and Monotheism (1939).

Once again threatened with religious persecution, renewed as a result of the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Freud escaped with his family to England. He died in London on September 23, 1939.

Freud’s ideas have stood the test of time. They are revisited by other schools of psychology and neuroscience as these various disciplines attempt to refine our still uncertain understanding of human mental processes. Despite their opposition, Adler and Jung and other successors further studied and modified many of his concepts. These concepts are fundamental to so many of the variants of psychoanalysis now in existence, and have evolved with it.