Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis

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Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was unarguably one of the most influential thinkers during the twentieth century. Freud was an Australian neurologist that was born May 6, 1856 in a place called Freiburg (in the Austrian empire). Freud’s birth name was Sigismund Schlomo Freud. He was brought up by his Jewish parents, Jakob Freud (his father) and Amalia Nathansohn (his mother). Freud was the oldest of eight children. During his childhood, their family struggled financially. They rented a room from a locksmith’s home, which is where his mother birthed Freud. When Freud was four years of age, his family moved to a place called Vienna, which is now the capital of Austria. He would live in Vienna all his life, up until the year …show more content…

Many of his ideas led up to psychoanalysis, but a major contribution was his book, “The Interpretations of Dreams”. Psychoanalysis is both a treatment, as well as a theory. Freud believed that if the unconscious thoughts were brought to the surface, than people could be helped or cured. He believed that a person's development is essentially determined by forgotten events in childhood, rather than biologically. Using psychotherapy would involve many lengthy sessions that included the patient and the psychologist speaking about issues, emotions, and traumatic experiences. The psychologist would typically sit out of sight from the patient and take notes as he/she spoke. Psychoanalysis uses techniques such as ink blots, parapraxes, free association, interpretation, resistance analysis and transference analysis to study the human mind. In modern day psychology, Freud’s works are widely criticized. One of the main critiques of psychoanalysis is that is solely lacks scientific proof. It is unmeasurable and cannot be proven nor disproven. Another major critique is that Freud used the case-study method, and focused mainly on wealthy European women, instead of broadening his studies on other types of people. Many people think that Freud over-sexualized everything in his theories, as well. Although Freud’s theories are often critiqued and overlooked, it is no secret that because of Sigmund Freud and his findings, psychology has come as far as it has today. Many of his theories and thoughts are a basis for other psychologists’ findings. Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential thinkers of his time. He opened the door for others to follow his “out of the box” styles of thinking. Psychoanalysis also opened the door for scientists to begin to study the unconscious mind, as well as dreams (which were not studied much before Freud). Because of Sigmund Freud,

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