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Biography
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6th, 1856 in a small rural town of Moravia. Jacob Freud, Freud’s father, worked as a merchant in the wool business, while his mother, Amalia Freud, was a housewife. Amalia was Jacob’s second wife, and Sigmund was the first of eight children of this marriage. Freud also had two older half-brothers, who were much older than him. Freud began medical school at the University of Vienna when he was seventeen years old and graduated in 1881. The following year, Freud became engaged to Martha Bernays, started his residency in neurology, and continued to work on a research project in neurophysiology. In 1885, Freud was given the opportunity of a lifetime: he received a grant to work with the highly regarded Jean Martin Charcot, a neurologist who was investigating the use of hypnosis. Freud admired Charcot who once told him that behind hysteria, there is always an underlying, intimate secret. After a year of working with Charcot, Freud returned to Vienna to set up a private practice and marry his fiancée, Martha Bernays. During this time, Freud attempted to use hypnosis on his patients. The practice was often questioned and Freud was not as proficient at it as Charcot was. He began using free associations and the cathartic method instead. Freud then himself contemplated on the cause of hysteria. He knew that, at the time, it was understood that hysteria was caused by problems in the nervous system. These problems then affected the patients in a conscious manner, because they were aware of their odd behavior. What Freud could not understand was the link between the nervous system deficiencies and the conscious behavior. In 1893, Freud teamed up with Joseph Breuer, an established physician in Vienna with his own practice. The team began to analyze many patients, including Anna O. A young, German woman, Anna O was diagnosed with severe hysteria, leaving her with symptoms such as assorted paralyses, hysterical squints, nervous coughs, and speech disorders. Freud and Breuer found out through hypnosis many incidents that had occurred in Anna O’s past that could relate to her symptoms in the present. One example was the reason for the nervous coughs. As a girl, Anna O had to nurse her sick father and often sit at his bedside through the night. One night she could hear rhythmic, dance music coming from her neighbor’s house. Anna O had an urge to go to her neighbor’s and dance with them. She immediately felt extremely guilty for even considering leaving her sick father. From then on, Anna O had a coughing fit every time she heard music. The example clearly pointed that this symptom of hysteria was caused by an element in the unconscious. Freud decided that the unconscious was the bridge between the cause and conscious effect. Freud went on to discover that everybody has natural instincts in the unconscious but are repressed due to society’s rules. The repression then causes odd behavior in the conscious. Freud also claimed that these instincts developed through childhood in the psychosexual stage of development. Freud continued to publish many books and essays with new findings about the unconscious and psychoanalysis. In 1938, friends and family urged Freud to leave Austria because of the coming of a new world war and the hostility against Jews. Freud and his family relocated to London, England. The following year, Sigmund Freud lost his longtime battle with cancer and passed away.
Other Patients
- Cäcilie M. (Anna von Lieben)
- Dora (Ida Bauer)
- Frau Emmy von N. (Fanny Moser )
- Frau Katharina (Aurelia Kronich)
- Little Hans (Herbert Graf)
- Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer)
- Wolf Man (Sergius Pankejeff)
Publications
- Studies on Hysteria
- The Interpretation of Dreams
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
- Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
- Totem and Taboo
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle
- Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
- Ego and the Id
- Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
- Civilization and its Discontents
