Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)

Abstract

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) the founder of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg, Moravia. He qualified in medicine at the University of Vienna and published almost 200 neuroscientific papers. But a visit to Charcot in Paris aroused his interest in hysteria and hence psychological development, both normative and abnormal. His first major psychoanalytic work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), was partly founded on his self-analysis, using the technique of free association. Intensive clinical investigation led to his elaboration of the concept of a mental organization inaccessible to introspection, and to formulations of preconscious mental functioning frequently, though not invariably, accessible to consciousness. Freud was always prepared to modify his views in the light of further experience: the most radical changes were described in the Ego and the Id (1923) and included, inter alia, the concept of unconscious guilt. He wrote extensively on the application of psychoanalysis to nonclinical fields, including sociology, anthropology, group psychology, and religion. When the Nazis occupied Vienna in 1938, he left for London with members of his family, warmly welcomed by the British Psychoanalytical Society. Within 15 months he died from a longstanding and painful cancer of the jaw. He wrote until the end.