Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

(1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Freiberg (now Pribor, Czech Republic). Freud was educated at Vienna University. Then him and his family moved to Leipzig from the anti-Semitic riots. His ambition in his childhood had been a career in law but then he decided to be medical student before he entered to Vienna University in 1873. After this he desire to study natural science and to solve challenging problems that confronted contemporary scientist. In his three year at Vienna University Freud began his research in central nervous system in the physiological lab under the direction of German Physician Ernst Wilhelm Von Brucke.

In 1881 after completing a year compulsory military service he receive his medical degree. After he received his degree he remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiological laboratory. Freud spent three years at the General Hospital of Vienna devoting himself to psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous disease. In 1885 after appointed as lecturer in neuropathology at the university he decided to leave his post in the hospital. Later that same year Freud studies under Jean Charcot in which centered largely on hysteria, influenced Freud greatly in channeling his interest to psychopathology. Freud than established a private practice in Vienna specializing in nervous disease.

In 1891, Freud’s first published work, On Aphasia, it was the study of neurological disorder in which the ability to pronounce words or to name common objects is lost as a result of organic brain disease. His final work in neurology was an article, “Infantile Cerebral Paralysis”, was written in 1897 for an encyclopedia. His consecutive writing were devoted entirely to that field, which he had named psychoanalysis in 1896. Sigmund Freud developed the technique of psychoanalysis and much of the psychoanalytic theory based on its application. The first of Freud's innovations was his recognition of unconscious psychiatric processes that follow laws different from those that govern conscious experience.

A basic assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious conflicts involve instinctual impulses, or drives, that originate in childhood. His work concerning the structure and the functioning of the human mind had far-reaching significance, both practically and scientifically, and it continues to influence...

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...ally alone in what he termed “splendid isolation.”

After the onset of World War I Freud devoted little time to clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to the interpretation of religion, mythology, art, and literature. In 1923 he was stricken with cancer of the jaw, which necessitated constant, painful treatment in addition to many surgical operations. Despite his physical suffering he continued his literary activity for the next 16 years, writing mostly on cultural and philosophical problems.

When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, Freud, a Jew, was persuaded by friends to escape with his family to England. Then he died in London on September 23, 1939.

Sigmund Freud created an entirely new approach to the understanding of human personality by his demonstration of the existence and force of the unconscious. In addition, he founded a new medical discipline and formulated basic therapeutic procedures that in modified form are applied widely in the present-day treatment of neuroses and psychoses. Although never accorded full recognition during his lifetime, Freud is generally acknowledged as one of the great creative minds of modern times.