Sigmund Freud's Life and Contributions To The Field of Psychology

A. Sigmund Freud

B. Biography

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, a small town in Austro-Hungarian. His parents were Amalia and Jacob Freud. His father was an industrious wool merchant with a happy and witty personality. His mother was a cheerful and vivacious woman. He was one of nine siblings. He was the first-born child of Amali and Jacob; however, two male siblings where from his father’s first marriage. When he was a young boy, his family moved to Vienna where he lived most of his life. At the age of twenty-six, he fell madly in love with Martha Bernays when she was visiting one of his sisters. Shortly thereafter, they married and had six children of their own three boys and three girls. His children describe him as a loving and compassionate man.

During his lifetime, Freud published eight books. The first book was an untitled monograph on cocaine, published in 1884. Then 1895 he published Studies on Hysteria with Breuer. In 1900, Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, followed by the book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 1901. In 1905, Freud wrote Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Then Freud took some time off. In 1920, he published Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which introduced his concept of the death instinct. Three years later, he published The Ego and the Id. His final work, Civilization and It’s Discontents was published in 1929, ten years prior before his death of lung cancer.

One of Freud’s major research accomplishments was his findings on infant sexuality also known as the Psychosexual Stages. The first stage is the oral stage which is 0-1 years of age. This is the stage where sensual/sexual life begins, in the form of sucking the thumb, biting, and breast suck...

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... mechanisms are denial, displacement, and rationalization. Denial is refusing to believe or perceive something that took place. Displacement is directing anger from the main target to a secondary target. Rationalization is trying to justify the actions someone did by making up a plausible excuse. (http://www.clinicalsolutions.org/Welcome.html), ((Sharon Heller Freud A to Z), and (http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/freud.html)

The only contributions that maybe used today are psychosexual stages. The psychosexual stages today are not focus on Freud’s psychosexual stages but on the interpersonal development. “The psychoanalysts Erik Erikson who proposed psychosexual stages that parallel Freud’s, but cover all the development stages and Erik Erikson stages are widely employed by psychologists all over to understand a kid’s development.” (Sharon Heller Freud A to Z p 47)