Biography of Sigmund Freud

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Sigmund Freud has been heralded as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. He is renowned for his discoveries about the human mind, particularly dreams, fantasies, and the role of the unconscious. Even though many of his theories were (and are) viewed as controversial, his ideas revolutionized the way people think about themselves. The potency of his notions have permeated almost every discipline, including literature, art, and medicine. This paper will examine the life, the influences, and the impact of Sigmund Freud. It will begin by discussing who he is, his personal history, and then talk about his role in the development of psychoanalysis. Next it will discuss some of the individuals who greatly inspired Freud. Finally, it will move on to talk about some of those upon whom Freud was an influence. Freud was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856, during the Victorian era. His father, Jackob, was a Jewish wool merchant, and his father's second wife, Amalia, was Freud's mother. He was the firstborn in a family of three boys and five girls. When Freud was four-years-old, his family moved to Vienna where he remained until the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1933 (Gay, 1989). Freud distinguished himself academically at a very young age. He was a prolific writer, and an avid reader in the arts, humanities, and sciences When he was seventeen-years-old, he began attending the University of Vienna to study medicine, which was one of the few opportunities offered for a young Jewish man during this time. He entered into the program with ambitions of becoming a research scientist, but was unable to do so because there was a quota for Jews in that field which had already been filled. As an alternativ... ... middle of paper ... ...hat in addition to the unconscious, to which he referred as the “personal unconscious”, there was also a deeper, more universal layer called the “collective unconscious”. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is a part of the human psyche that contains images, thoughts, and feelings shared by all human beings, organized in underlying patterns, and is modified by each person’s subjective experience (Stevens, 1990; Wedding, Corsini, & Dumont, 2008). Using his own ideas about the psychic structure, Jung began to develop his own theories about dream interpretation. Jung’s theories about dreams were heavily impacted by those of Freud; however, Jung thought that dreams were direct messages, and a natural expression of the unconscious. This was unlike Freud, who believed that dreams are disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes (Stevens, 1990; Lear, 2005).

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