The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Sir Christopher Riegel and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The unconscious mind might be defined as that part of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a person's mind but which the person is not aware of at the time of their occurrence. These phenomena include unconscious feelings, unconscious or automatic skills, unnoticed perceptions, unconscious thoughts, unconscious habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and concealed desires.

The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of night dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without apparent cause); the repository of memories that have been forgotten but that may nevertheless be accessible to consciousness at some later time; and the locus of implicit knowledge, i.e. all the things that we have learned so well that we do them without thinking. One familiar example of the operation of the unconscious is the phenomenon where one fails to immediately solve a given problem and then suddenly has a flash of insight that provides a solution maybe days later at some odd moment during the day.

Observers throughout history have argued that there are influences on consciousness from other parts of the mind. These observers differ in the use of related terms, including: unconsciousness as a personal habit; being unaware and intuition. Terms related to semi-consciousness include: awakening, implicit memory, subliminal messages, trances, hypnagogia, and hypnosis. Although sleep, sleep walking, dreaming, delirium and coma may signal the presence of unconscious processes, these processes are not the unconscious mind, but more of a symptom.

Historical overview

Influences on thinking that emanate from outside of the individual's self-generated consciousness are reflected in the ancient ideas of temptation, divine inspiration and the role of the gods in influencing motives and actions. The idea of internalised unconscious processes in the mind also originated in antiquity and has been explored across cultures. Unconscious aspects of mentality were referred to between 2500 and 600 BC in the Hindu texts known as the Vedas, found today in Ayurvedic medicine. In the Vedic worldview, consciousness is the basis of physiology and pure consciousness is "an abstract, silent, completely unified field of consciousness" within "an architecture of increasingly abstract, functionally integrated faculties or levels of mind".

Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an unconscious aspect of cognition in his work ''Von den Krankheiten'' (translates as "About illnesses", 1567), and his clinical methodology created a cogent system that is regarded by some as the beginning of modern scientific psychology. Shakespeare explored the role of the unconscious in many of his plays, without naming it as such. Western philosophers such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, developed a western view of mind which foreshadowed those of Freud. Schopenhauer was also influenced by his reading of the Vedas.

Articulating the idea of something not conscious or actively denied to awareness with the symbolic constructs of language has been a process of human thought and interpersonal influence for millennia.

The resultant status of the unconscious mind may be viewed as a social construction—that the unconscious exists because people agree to behave as if it exists. Symbolic interactionism goes further and argues that people's selves (conscious and unconscious) though purposeful and creative are nevertheless social products.

Unconscious processes and the unconscious mind

Some neuroscientific research supports the proposition of the unconscious mind. For example, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have found that fleeting images of fearful faces—images that appear and disappear so quickly that they escape conscious awareness—produce unconscious anxiety that can be detected in the brain with the latest neuroimaging machines. The conscious mind is hundreds of milliseconds behind the unconscious processes.

To understand this type of research, a distinction has to be made between unconscious processes and the unconscious mind: they are not the same. Neuroscience is more likely to examine the former than the latter. The unconscious mind and its expected psychoanalytic contents are also different from unconsciousness, coma and a minimally conscious state. The differences in the uses of the term can be explained, to a degree, by different narratives about what we know. One such narrative is psychoanalytic theory.

Freud and the psychoanalytic unconscious

Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of 'unconscious mind'—and the one which most people will immediately think of upon hearing the term—is that developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers. It lies at the heart of psychoanalysis.

Consciousness, in Freud's topographical view (which was his first of several psychological models of the mind), was a relatively thin perceptual aspect of the mind. The unconscious was considered by Freud throughout the evolution of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious.

Freud divided mind into the conscious mind or ego and two parts of the unconscious: the id or instincts and the superego. He used the idea of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior.

In this theory, the unconscious refers to that part of mental functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware.

Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the conscious mind, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind—each lying beneath the other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind, like hidden messages from the unconscious—a form of intrapersonal communication out of awareness. He interpreted these events as having both symbolic and actual significance.

For psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, rather only what is actively repressed from conscious thought or what the person is averse to knowing consciously. In a sense this view places the self in relationship to their unconscious as an adversary, warring with itself to keep what is unconscious hidden. The therapist is then a mediator trying to allow the unspoken or unspeakable to reveal itself using the tools of psychoanalysis. Messages arising from a conflict between conscious and unconscious are likely to be cryptic. The psychoanalyst is presented as an expert in interpreting those messages.

For Freud, the unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom.

Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as meditation, random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis.

Freud's theory of the unconscious was substantially transformed by some of his followers, among them Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.

Jung's collective unconscious

Carl Jung developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious into two parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed. The collective unconscious is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the accumulation of inherited psychic structures and archetypal experiences. There is considerable two-way traffic between the ego and the personal unconscious, such as when one's mind wanders to thoughts irrelevant to the current situation.

Lacan's linguistic unconscious

Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory contends that the unconscious is structured like a language.

The unconscious, Lacan argued, was not a more primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, but rather, a formation every bit as complex and linguistically sophisticated as consciousness itself.

If the unconscious is structured like a language, Lacan argues, then the self is denied any point of reference to which to be "restored" following trauma or "identity crisis". In this way, Lacan's thesis of the structurally dynamic unconscious is also a challenge to the ego psychology of Anna Freud and her American followers. A fundamental premise of the concept of the Lacanian unconscious is the letter and the function of the signifier in relation to the unconscious (see "The Purloined Letter" and "The Agent of the Letter in the Unconscious," in ''Ecrits''). In his later Seminars, Lacan began to explain the unconscious through the logic of knots.

Lacan's idea of how language is structured is largely taken from the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson, based on the function of the signifier and signified in signifying chains.

The starting point for the linguistic theory of the unconscious was a re-reading of Freud's ''The Interpretation of Dreams''. There, Freud identifies two mechanisms at work in the formation of unconscious fantasies: condensation and displacement. Under Lacan's linguistic reading, condensation is identified with the linguistic trope of metaphor, and displacement with metonymy.

Lacan applied the ideas of de Saussure and Jakobson to psychoanalytic practice. For example, while de Saussure described the linguistic sign as a relationship between a signified and an arbitrary signifier, Lacan inverted the relationship, putting in first place the signifier as determining the signified, and so being closer to Freud's position that human beings know what they say only as a result of a chain of signifiers, a-posteriori. Lacan began this work with the case of Emma (1895) from Freud, whose symptoms were disenchained in a two-phase temporal process. Its repercussions are most strongly felt in literary/critical theory, as well as among those who practice Lacanian analysis.

Controversy

Today, there are still fundamental disagreements within psychology about the nature of the unconscious mind. It may simply stand as a metaphor that ought not to be refined. Outside formal psychology, a whole world of pop-psychological speculation has grown up in which the unconscious mind is held to have any number of properties and abilities, from animalistic and innocent, child-like aspects to savant-like, all-perceiving, mystical and occultic properties.

There is a great controversy over the concept of an unconscious in regard to its scientific or rational validity and whether the unconscious mind exists at all. Among philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents. Popper argued that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific. He objected not so much to the idea that things happened in our minds that we are unconscious of, but to investigations of mind that were not falsifiable. If one could connect every imaginable experimental outcome with Freud's theory of the unconscious mind, then no experiment could refute the theory.

In the social sciences, John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviourist, criticized the idea of an "unconscious mind," using a similar line of reasoning, and instead focused on observable behaviors rather than on introspection.

Unlike Popper, the epistemologist Adolf Grunbaum argued that psychoanalysis could be falsifiable, but its evidence reggins has serious epistemological problems. David Holmes examined sixty years of research about the Freudian concept of "repression", and concluded that there is no positive evidence for this concept. Given the lack of evidence of many Freudian hypotheses, some scientific researchers proposed the existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a "cognitive unconscious" (John Kihlstrom), an "adaptive unconscious" (Timothy Wilson), or a "dum unconscious" (Loftus & Klinger), which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Bouveresse argued that Freudian thought exhibits a systemic confusion between reasons and causes: the methods of interpretation can give reasons for new meanings, but are useless to find causal relations (which require experimental research). Wittgenstein gave the following example (in his Conversations with Rush Rhees): if we throw objects on a table, and we give free associations and interpretations about those objects, we'll find a meaning for each object and its place, but we won't find the causes.

Another contemporary philosopher, John Searle, has written a convincing critique of the Freudian unconscious. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts" that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are ''in principle never accessible'' to conscious awareness, is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not "nonconscious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it) is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it is being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the nonconscious processes of the brain. These ideas are discussed more at length in his book ''The Rediscovery of the Mind''.

Other critics of Freudian unconscious were Hans Eysenck, Jacques Van Rillaer, Frank Cioffi, Marshal Edelson, Edward Erwin.

Some stress, however, that these critics did not grasp the real importance of Freud's conceptions, and rather tried to criticize Freud on the basis of other fields. The first who really grasped this was Bertrand Russell (see for example: "The impact of science in society", 1952). But in modern times, many other thinkers, as for example Althusser, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, managed to grasp the "falsification theory" from Popper, and the critics from Eysenck, as another expression of Master's discourse: the aspiration to a so-called scientific society led by evaluation. (For this side of the controversy, cf. the works of Jean-Claude Milner in France.)

In modern cognitive psychology, many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or "automatic" have come into currency. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior. Active research traditions related to the unconscious include implicit memory (see priming, implicit attitudes), and nonconscious acquisition of knowledge (see Lewicki, see also the section on cognitive perspective, below).

Unconscious mind in contemporary cognitive psychology

Research

While, historically, the psychoanalytic research tradition was the first to focus on the phenomenon of unconscious mental activity, there is an extensive body of conclusive research and knowledge in contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to the mental activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness.

Most of that (cognitive) research on unconscious processes has been done in the mainstream, academic tradition of the information processing paradigm. As opposed to the psychoanalytic tradition, driven by the relatively speculative (in the sense of being hard to empirically verify), theoretical concepts such as the Oedipus complex or Electra complex, the cognitive tradition of research on unconscious processes is based on relatively few theoretical assumptions and is very empirically oriented (i.e., it is mostly data driven). Cognitive research has revealed that automatically, and clearly outside of conscious awareness, individuals register and acquire more information than what they can experience through their conscious thoughts. (See Augusto, 2010, for a recent comprehensive survey.)

Unconscious processing of information about frequency

For example, an extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks has demonstrated that individuals register information about the frequency of events automatically (i.e., outside of conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources). Moreover, perceivers do this unintentionally, truly "automatically," regardless of the instructions they receive, and regardless of the information processing goals they have. Interestingly, the ability to unconsciously and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality, thus it may represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in general.

Artificial grammars

Another line of (non-psychoanalytic) early research on unconscious processes was initiated by Arthur Reber, using so-called "artificial grammar" methodology. That research revealed that individuals exposed to novel words created by complex sets of artificial, synthetic "grammatical" rules (e.g., GKHAH, KHABT...), quickly develop some sort of a "feel" for that grammar and subsequent working knowledge of that grammar, as demonstrated by their ability to differentiate between new grammatically "correct" (i.e., consistent with the rules) and "incorrect" (inconsistent) words. Interestingly, that ability does not appear to be mediated, or even accompanied by the declarative knowledge of the rules (i.e., individuals' ability to articulate how they distinguish between the correct and incorrect words).

Unconscious acquisition of procedural knowledge

The gist of these early findings (from the '70s) has been significantly extended in the '80s and '90s by further research showing that outside of conscious awareness individuals not only acquire information about frequencies (i.e., "occurrences" of features or events) but also co-occurrences (i.e., correlations or, technically speaking, covariations) between features or events. Extensive research on nonconscious acquisition of information about covariations was conducted by Pawel Lewicki, followed by research of D. L. Schachter (who is known for introducing the concept of implicit memory), L. R. Squire, and others.

In the learning phase of a typical study, participants were exposed to a stream of stimuli (trials or events, such as strings of letters, digits, pictures, or descriptions of stimulus persons) containing some consistent but non-salient (hidden) covariation between features or events. For example, every stimulus person presented as "fair" would also have a slightly elongated face. It turned out that even if the manipulated covariations were non-salient and inaccessible to subjects' conscious awareness, the perceivers would still acquire a nonconscious working knowledge about those covariations. For example, if in the testing phase of the study, participants were asked to make intuitive judgements about the personalities of new stimulus persons presented only as pictures (with no personality descriptions), and judge the "fairness" of the depicted individuals, they tend to follow the rules nonconsciously acquired in the learning phase and if the stimulus person had a slightly elongated face, they would report an intuitive feeling that this person was "fair".

Nonconscious acquisition of information about covariations appears to be one of the fundamental and ubiquitous processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge (skills, experience) or even preferences or personality dispositions, including disorders or symptoms of disorders.

Unconsciousness versus nonconsciousness

Unlike in the psychoanalytic research tradition that uses the terms "unconscious", in the cognitive tradition, the processes that are not mediated by conscious awareness are sometimes referred to as "nonconscious". This term, rarely used in psychoanalysis, stresses the empirical and purely descriptive nature of that phenomenon (a qualification as simply "not being conscious") in the tradition of cognitive research.

Specifically, the process is non-conscious when even highly motivated individuals fail to report it, and few theoretical assumptions are made about the process (unlike in psychoanalysis where, for example, it is postulated that some of these processes are being repressed in order to achieve certain goals.)

See also

Adaptive unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a collective unconscious

Consciousness

Jacques Lacan's assertion that "the unconscious is structured like a language".

Mind's eye

Neuroscience of free will

Preconscious

Psychoanalysis

Transpersonal Psychology

Unconscious communication

Transdisciplinary topics

Cell signaling

Molecular Cellular Cognition

Philosophy of mind

Portal:thinking

List of thought processes

References

Notes

from Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind, "Implicit Memory"

Nonconscious Acquisition of Information (a reprint from American Psychologist, 1992)

External links

The Rediscovery of the Unconscious

Nonconscious Acquisition of Information (a reprint from American Psychologist, 1992)

Category:Freudian psychology Category:Jungian psychology Category:Neuropsychology Category:Central nervous system Category:Hypnosis Category:Mental processes

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Coordinates	43°35′07″N39°43′13″N
name	Sigmund Freud
birth date	May 06, 1856
birth place	Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), Austrian Empire
death date	September 23, 1939
death place	London, England, UK
residence	Austria
nationality	Austrian
fields	NeurologyPsychotherapyPsychoanalysis
workplaces	University of Vienna
alma mater	University of Vienna
known for	Psychoanalysis
influences	Breuer, Charcot, Darwin, Dostoyevsky, Goethe, Haeckel, Hartmann, Jackson, Aristotle , Plato , Jacobsen, Kant, Mayer, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Sophocles
influenced	Eugen Bleuler, John Bowlby, Viktor Frankl, Anna Freud, Otto Gross, Arthur Janov, Ernest Jones, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, Fritz Perls, Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich
awards	Goethe PrizeForeign Member of the Royal Society (London)
signature	FreudSignature.svg
spouse	}}

Sigmund Freud (), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. An early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy, Freud later developed theories about the unconscious and the mechanism of repression, and created psychoanalysis as a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst.

Freud postulated that sexual drives were the primary motivational forces of human life, developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association, discovered the phenomenon of transference in the therapeutic relationship and established its central role in the analytic process, and interpreted dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was also a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.

Early life

Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Příbor (), then part of the Austrian Empire (1804–1867), now the Czech Republic. His father, Jacob Freud (1815–1896), was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother, Amalié (née Nathansohn), the third wife of Jacob, was 21.. He was the first of their eight children and, in accordance with tradition, his parents favored him over his siblings from the early stages of his childhood. Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen.

Despite their poverty, the Freuds ensured Sigmund’s schooling and education. Due to the Panic of 1857, Freud's father lost his business, and the Freud family moved to Leipzig before settling in Vienna. In 1865, the nine-year-old student Freud entered the ''Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium'', a prominent high school. He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors. He went to the University of Vienna at 17. Freud had planned to study law, but instead joined the medical faculty at the University of Vienna to study under Darwinist Professor Karl Claus. At that time, the eel life cycle was unknown and Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an unsuccessful search for their male reproductive organs.

Freud greatly admired the philosopher Franz Brentano, known for his theory of perception, as well as Theodor Lipps, who was one of the main supporters of the ideas of the unconscious and empathy. Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his 1874 book ''Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint''. Although Brentano himself rejected the unconscious, his discussion of it probably helped introduce Freud to the concept. Brentano identified Thomas Aquinas as one of the earliest people to suggest the existence of the unconscious; Freud may therefore have been unknowingly siding with Aquinas on this issue.

Freud read Friedrich Nietzsche as a student, and bought his collected works in 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death; Freud told Wilhelm Fliess that he hoped to find in Nietzsche "the words for much that remains mute in me." According to Peter Gay, however, Freud treated Nietzsche's writings "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied"; immediately after reporting to Fliess that he had bought Nietzsche's works, Freud added that he had not yet opened them. Students of Freud began to point out analogies between his work and that of Nietzsche almost as soon as he developed a following.

Freud began smoking tobacco at age 24; initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker. Freud believed that smoking enhanced his capacity to work, and believed he could exercise self-discipline in moderating his tobacco-smoking; yet, despite health warnings from Fliess, and to the detriment of his health, Freud remained a smoker, eventually suffering a buccal cancer.

Carl Jung initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896. Hans Eysenck suggests that the affair occurred, resulting in an aborted pregnancy for Miss Bernays. The publication in 2006 of a Swiss hotel log, dated 13 August 1898, has been regarded by some Freudian scholars (including Peter Gay) as showing that there was a factual basis to these rumors.

Freud was a "partially assimilated, mostly secular Jew." According to biographer Ernest Jones (1945) "Freud's Jewishness contributed greatly to his work and his firm convictions about his findings. Freud often referred to his ability to stand alone, if need be, without wavering or surrendering his intellectual and scientific discoveries, and he attributed this ability to his irreligious but strong Jewish identity in an antisemitic society, whereby he was accustomed to a marginal status and being set aside as different." Freud once described himself as "an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well as from every other religion", but who remains "in his essential nature a Jew, and who has no desire to alter that nature".

Development of psychoanalysis

In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist and researcher of hypnosis. He was later to remember the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Freud later turned away from hypnosis as a potential cure for mental illness, instead favouring free association and dream analysis.

After opening his own medical practice, specializing in neurology, Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886. Her father Berman was the son of Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi in Hamburg. The couple had six children (Mathilde, 1887; Jean-Martin, 1889; Olivier, 1891; Ernst, 1892; Sophie, 1893; Anna, 1895).

After experimenting with hypnosis on his neurotic patients, Freud abandoned it as ineffective. He instead adopted a form of treatment where the patient talked through his or her problems. This came to be known as the "talking cure" and its goal was to locate and release powerful emotional energy that had initially been rejected or imprisoned in the unconscious mind. Freud called this psychic action “repression”, and he believed that it was an impediment to the normal functioning of the psyche, even capable of causing physical retardation which he described as "psychosomatic". The term "talking cure" was initially coined by a patient, Anna O., who was treated by Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. The "talking cure" is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysis. In late 1895 Freud arrived at the view that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for the ''psychoneuroses'' (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), now known as the seduction theory. However he later lost faith in the theory and that led in 1897 to the emergence of Freud's new theory of infantile sexuality, and eventually to the Oedipus complex.

After the publication of ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' in November 1899, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed. However, Freud often clashed with those supporters who criticized his theories, the most famous of whom was Carl Jung. Part of the disagreement between them was due to Jung's interest in and commitment to spirituality and occultism, which Freud saw as unscientific.

Karen Horney, a pupil of Karl Abraham, criticized Freud's theory of femininity, leading him to defend it against her. Horney's challenge to Freud's theories, along with that of Melanie Klein, produced the first psychoanalytic debate on femininity. Ernest Jones, although usually an "ultra-orthodox" Freudian, sided with Horney and Klein. Horney was Freud's most outspoken critic, although her and Jones's disagreement with Freud was over how to interpret penis envy rather than whether it existed. Horney understood Freud's conception of the castration complex as a theory about the biological nature of women, one in which women were biologically castrated men, and rejected it as scientifically unsatisfying.

In his forties, Freud experienced several, probably psychosomatic, medical problems, including depression and heart irregularities that fuelled a superstitious belief that he would die at the age of 51. Around this time Freud began exploring his own dreams, memories, and the dynamics of his personality development. During this self-analysis, he came to realize a hostility he felt towards his father, Jacob Freud, who had died in 1896. He also became convinced that he had developed sexual feelings towards his mother in infancy ("between two and two and a half years"). Richard Webster argues that Freud’s account of his self-analysis shows that he “had remembered only a long train journey, from whose duration he ''deduced'' that he might have seen his mother undressing”, and that Freud’s memory was an artificial reconstruction.

Patients

Freud used pseudonyms in his case histories. Some patients known by pseudonyms were Cäcilie M. (Anna von Lieben); Dora (Ida Bauer, 1882–1945); Frau Emmy von N. (Fanny Moser); Fräulein Elisabeth von R. (Ilona Weiss); Fräulein Katharina (Aurelia Kronich); Fräulein Lucy R.; Little Hans (Herbert Graf, 1903–1973); Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer, 1878–1914); Enos Fingy (Joshua Wild, 1878–1920); and Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff, 1887–1979). Other famous patients included H.D. (1886–1961); Emma Eckstein (1865–1924); Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), with whom Freud had only a single, extended consultation; and Princess Marie Bonaparte.

Several writers have criticized both Freud's clinical efforts and his accounts of them. Eysenck writes that Freud consistently mis-diagnosed his patients and fraudulently misrepresented case histories. Frederick Crews writes that "...even applying his own indulgent criteria, with no allowance for placebo factors and no systematic followup to check for relapses, Freud was unable to document a single unambiguously efficacious treatment". Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen writes that historians of psychoanalysis have shown "that things did not happen in the way Freud and his authorised biographers told us"; he cites Han Israëls's view that "Freud...was so confident in his first theories that he publicly boasted of therapeutic successes that he had not yet obtained." Freud, in that interpretation, was forced to provide explanations for his abandonment of those theories that concealed his real reason, which was that the therapeutic benefits he expected did not materialise; he knew that his patients were not cured, but "did not hesitate to build grand theories on these non-existent foundations."

Followers

Freud spent most of his life in Vienna. From 1891 until 1938 he and his family lived in an apartment at Berggasse 19 near the ''Innere Stadt'' or historical quarter of Vienna. As a docent of the University of Vienna, Freud, since the mid-1880s, had been delivering lectures on his theories to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the university's psychiatric clinic. His work generated a considerable degree of interest from a small group of Viennese physicians. From the autumn of 1902 and shortly after his promotion to the honourific title of ''außerordentlicher Professor'', a small group of followers formed around him, meeting at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon, to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology. This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (''Psychologischen Mittwoch-Gesellschaft'') and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement.

This discussion group was founded around Freud at the suggestion of the physician Wilhelm Stekel. Stekel had studied medicine at the University of Vienna under Richard von Krafft-Ebing. His conversion to psychoanalysis is variously attributed to his successful treatment by Freud for a sexual problem or as a result of his reading ''The Interpretation of Dreams'', to which he subsequently gave a positive review in the Viennese daily newspaper ''Neues Wiener Tagblatt''. The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians and all five were Jewish by birth. Both Kahane and Reitler were childhood friends of Freud. Kahane had attended the same secondary school and both he and Reitler went to university with Freud. They had kept abreast of Freud's developing ideas through their attendance at his Saturday evening lectures. In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud's work, had opened an out-patient psychotherapy institute of which he was the director in Bauernmarkt, in Vienna. In the same year his medical textbook, ''Outline of Internal Medicine for Students and Practicing Physicians'' was published. In it he provided an outline of Freud's psychoanalytic method. Kahane broke with Freud and left the Wednesday Psychological Society in 1907 for unknown reasons and in 1923 he committed suicide. Reitler was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in Dorotheergasse which had been founded in 1901. He died prematurely in 1917. Adler, regarded as the most formidable intellect among the early Freud circle, was a socialist who in 1898 had written a health manual for the tailoring trade. He was particularly interested in the potential social impact of psychiatry.

Max Graf, a Viennese musicologist and father of "Little Hans", who had first encountered Freud in 1900 and joined the Wednesday group soon after its initial inception, described the ritual and atmosphere of the early meetings of the society:

''The gatherings followed a definite ritual. First one of the members would present a paper. Then, black coffee and cakes were served; cigar and cigarettes were on the table and were consumed in great quantities. After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin. The last and decisive word was always spoken by Freud himself. There was the atmosphere of the foundation of a religion in that room. Freud himself was its new prophet who made the heretofore prevailing methods of psychological investigation appear superficial.''

By 1906 the group had grown to sixteen members, including Otto Rank, who was employed as the group's paid secretary. Also in that year Freud began correspondence with Carl Gustav Jung who was then an assistant to Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zurich. In March 1907 Jung and Ludwig Binswanger, also a Swiss psychaitrist, travelled to Vienna to visit Freud and attend the discussion group. Thereafter they established a small psychoanalytic group in Zurich. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status, the Wednesday group was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Some of Freud's followers subsequently withdrew from the original psychoanalytic society and founded their own schools. The most famous of these are Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Otto Rank.

From 1909, Adler's views on topics such as neurosis began to differ markedly from those held by Freud. As Adler's position appeared increasingly incompatible with Freudianism a series of confrontations between their respective viewpoints took place at the meetings of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in January and February 1911. In February 1911 Adler, then the President of the society, resigned his position. At this time Stekel also resigned his position as vice-president of the society. Adler finally left the Freudian group altogether in June 1911 to found his own heretical organisation with nine other members who had also resigned from the group. This new formation was initially called ''Society for Free Psychoanalysis'' but it was soon renamed the ''Society for Individual Psychology''. In the period after World War I, Adler became increasingly associated with the psychological position which he devised and that is termed individual psychology.

In 1912 Jung published ''Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido'' (published in English in 1916 as ''Psychology of the Unconscious'') and it became clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud. To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it analytical psychology. In the autumn of 1913 the relationship between Freud and Jung broke down irretrievably and the Swiss psychoanalytic organisation fell into disrepair.

Freud published a paper entitled The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement in 1914, German original being first published in the ''Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse'', where he gave his view on the birth and evolution of the psychoanalytic movement and the withdrawal of Adler and Jung from it.

In 1924, Otto Rank published ''Das Trauma der Geburt'' (translated into English as ''The Trauma of Birth'' in 1929), exploring how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the “phase before the development of the Oedipus complex.” But there was no such phase in Freud’s theories. The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy – indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the supreme causal factor in psychoanalysis. Rank coined the term “pre-Oedipal” in 1925, and is now considered the first object-relations theorist and therapist. As an outcome of their dispute over ''Das Trauma der Geburt'', Rank broke with Freud in 1926.

Struggle with cancer

In February 1923, Freud detected a leukoplakia, a benign growth associated with heavy smoking, on his mouth. Freud initially kept this secret, but in April 1923 he informed Ernest Jones, telling him that the growth had been removed. Freud consulted the dermatologist Maximilian Steiner, who advised him to quit smoking but lied about the growth's seriousness, minimizing its importance. Freud later saw Felix Deutsch, who saw that the growth was cancerous; he identified it to Freud using the euphemism "a bad leukoplakia" instead of the technical diagnosis epithelioma. Deutsch advised Freud to stop smoking and have the growth excised. Freud was treated by Marcus Hajek, a rhinologist whose competence he had previously questioned. Hajek performed an unnecessary cosmetic surgery in his clinic's outpatient department. Freud bled during and after the operation, and may narrowly have escaped death. Freud subsequently saw Deutsch again. Deutsch saw that further surgery would be required, but refrained from telling Freud that he had cancer because he was worried that Freud might wish to commit suicide.

Escape from Nazism

In 1930, Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize in recognition of his contributions to psychology and to German literary culture. In January 1933, the Nazis took control of Germany, and Freud's books were prominent among those they burned and destroyed. Freud quipped: “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books.” On 12 March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This led to violent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Vienna, and Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Freud decided to go into exile "to die in freedom". He was fortuitously assisted by Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi official given control over Freud's assets in Austria. Four of Freud's five sisters perished in Nazi concentration camps.

At the University of Vienna, Sauerwald had been a student of Professor Josef Herzig, who often played cards with Freud. Sauerwald did not inform his Nazi superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts and disobeyed a Nazi directive to have Freud's books on psychoanalysis destroyed, instead smuggling them with an accomplice to the Austrian national library, where they were hidden. Finally, dismayed at being ordered to transform Freud's home into an institute for the study of Aryan superiority, Sauerwald signed Freud's exit visa. In June 1938, Freud and his family left Vienna aboard the Orient Express train. They settled in London, at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead. In the United Kingdom, Freud told a newspaper that “all my money and property in Vienna is gone”; he did not mention his secret bank accounts. When Anton Sauerwald was tried for stealing Freud’s secret wealth after the war, Anna Freud intervened to protect Sauerwald. She disclosed to her cousin Harry Freud, a US army officer who had had Sauerwald arrested, that: "[The] truth is that we really owe our lives and our freedom to ,... [Sauerwald]. Without him we would never have got away." Sauerwald was then released from U.S. custody.

Death

In September 1939, Freud, who was suffering from cancer and in severe pain, persuaded his doctor and friend Max Schur to help him commit suicide. After reading Honoré de Balzac's ''La Peau de chagrin'' in a single sitting, Freud asked him, “Schur, you remember our ‘contract’ not to leave me in the lurch when the time had come. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense.” When Schur replied that he had not forgotten, Freud said, “I thank you.” and then “Talk it over with Anna, and if she thinks it’s right, then make an end of it.” Anna Freud wanted to postpone her father’s death, but Schur convinced her it was pointless to keep him alive, and on 21 and 22 September administered doses of morphine that resulted in Freud's death on 23 September 1939. Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in England during a service attended by Austrian refugees, including the author Stefan Zweig. His ashes were later placed in the crematorium's columbarium. They rest in an ancient Greek urn that Freud received as a gift from Marie Bonaparte, and which he had kept in his study in Vienna for many years. After his wife Martha's death in 1951, her ashes were also placed in the urn.

Ideas

Freud simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind's organization and internal operations and a theory that human behavior both conditions and results from how the mind is organized. This led him to favor certain clinical techniques for trying to help cure mental illness. He theorized that personality is developed by a person's childhood experiences.

Early work

Freud began his study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873. He took almost nine years to complete his studies, due to his interest in neurophysiological research, specifically investigation of the sexual anatomy of eels and the physiology of the fish nervous system. He entered private practice in neurology for financial reasons, receiving his M.D. degree in 1881 at the age of 25. He was also an early researcher in the field of cerebral palsy, which was then known as "cerebral paralysis." He published several medical papers on the topic, and showed that the disease existed long before other researchers of the period began to notice and study it. He also suggested that William Little, the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during birth being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were only a symptom. Freud hoped that his research would provide a solid scientific basis for his therapeutic technique. The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness in order to free the patient from suffering repetitive distorted emotions.

Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness is brought about by encouraging a patient to talk in free association and to talk about dreams. Another important element of psychoanalysis is lesser direct involvement on the part of the analyst, which is meant to encourage the patient to project thoughts and feelings onto the analyst. Through this process, transference, the patient can discover and resolve repressed conflicts, especially childhood conflicts involving parents.

The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to Josef Breuer. Freud credited Breuer with opening the way to the discovery of the psychoanalytical method by his treatment of the case of Anna O. In November 1880 Breuer was called in to treat a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman (Bertha Pappenheim) for a persistent cough which he diagnosed as hysterical. He found that while nursing her dying father she had developed a number of transitory symptoms, including visual disorders and paralysis and contractures of limbs, which he also diagnosed as hysterical. Breuer began to see his patient almost every day as the symptoms increased and became more persistent, and observed that she entered states of ''absence''. He found that when, with his encouragement, she told fantasy stories in her evening states of ''absence'' her condition improved, and most of her symptoms had disappeared by April 1881. However, following the death of her father in that month her condition deteriorated again. Breuer recorded that some of the symptoms eventually remitted spontaneously, and that full recovery was achieved by inducing her to recall events that had precipitated the occurrence of a specific symptom. In the years immediately following Breuer's treatment, Anna O. spent three short periods in sanatoria with the diagnosis "hysteria" with "somatic symptoms," and some authors have challenged Breuer's published account of a cure. Richard Skues rejects this interpretation, which he sees as stemming from both Freudian and anti-psychoanalytical revisionism, that regards both Breuer's narrative of the case as unreliable and his treatment of Anna O. as a failure.

In the early 1890s Freud used a form of treatment based on the one that Breuer had described to him, modified by what he called his "pressure technique" and his newly developed analytic technique of interpretation and reconstruction. According to Freud's later accounts of this period, as a result of his use of this procedure most of his patients in the mid-1890s reported early childhood sexual abuse. He believed these stories, but then came to believe that they were fantasies. He explained these at first as having the function of "fending off" memories of infantile masturbation, but in later years he wrote that they represented Oedipal fantasies.

Another version of events focuses on Freud's proposing that unconscious memories of infantile sexual abuse were at the root of the psychoneuroses in letters to Fliess in October 1895, before he reported that he had actually discovered such abuse among his patients. In the first half of 1896 Freud published three papers stating that he had uncovered, in all of his current patients, deeply repressed memories of sexual abuse in early childhood. In these papers Freud recorded that his patients were not consciously aware of these memories, and must therefore be present as ''unconscious memories'' if they were to result in hysterical symptoms or obsessional neurosis. The patients were subjected to considerable pressure to "reproduce" infantile sexual abuse "scenes" that Freud was convinced had been repressed into the unconscious. Patients were generally unconvinced that their experiences of Freud's clinical procedure indicated actual sexual abuse. He reported that even after a supposed "reproduction" of sexual scenes the patients assured him emphatically of their disbelief.

As well as his pressure technique, Freud's clinical procedures involved analytic inference and the symbolic interpretation of symptoms to trace back to memories of infantile sexual abuse. His claim of one hundred percent confirmation of his theory only served to reinforce previously expressed reservations from his colleagues about the validity of findings obtained through his suggestive techniques.

Cocaine

As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems, and in his 1884 paper "On Coca" he extolled its virtues. Between 1883 and 1887 he wrote several articles recommending medical applications, including its use as an antidepressant. He narrowly missed out on obtaining scientific priority for discovering its anesthetic properties of which he was aware but had mentioned only in passing. (Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, received that distinction in 1884 after reporting to a medical society the ways cocaine could be used in delicate eye surgery.) Freud also recommended cocaine as a cure for morphine addiction. He had introduced cocaine to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow who had become addicted to morphine taken to relieve years of excruciating nerve pain resulting from an infection acquired while performing an autopsy. However, his claim that Fleischl-Marxow was cured of his addiction was premature, though he never acknowledged he had been at fault. Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis", and soon returned to using morphine, dying a few years later after more suffering from intolerable pain.

The application as an anesthetic turned out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine, and as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world, Freud's medical reputation became somewhat tarnished.

After the "Cocaine Episode" Freud ceased to publicly recommend use of the drug, but continued to take it himself occasionally for depression, migraine and nasal inflammation during the early 1890s, before giving it up in 1896. In this period he came under the influence of his friend and confidant Fliess, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the so-called "nasal reflex neurosis". Fliess, who operated on the noses of several of his own patients, also performed operations on Freud and on one of Freud's patients whom he believed to be suffering from the disorder, Emma Eckstein. However, the surgery proved disastrous.

Some critics have suggested that much of Freud's early psychoanalytical theory was a by-product of his cocaine use.

The Unconscious

Freud argued for the importance of the unconscious mind in understanding conscious thought and behavior. However, as psychologist Jacques Van Rillaer pointed out, "the unconscious was not discovered by Freud. In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology, examined the way Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious'". Moreover, as historian of psychology Mark Altschule observed, "It is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to find a nineteenth-century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance."

Freud's theory of dreams has been compared to Plato's. Ernest Gellner writes that, "Plato and Freud hold virtually the same theory of dreams", but Michel Foucault denies any such equivalence: "The sentence 'dreams fulfil desires' may have been repeated throughout the centuries; it is not the same statement in Plato and in Freud." Freud's dream theory was criticized during his life by Lydiard H. Horton, who in 1915 read a paper at a joint meeting of the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Sciences that called Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and suggested that "rank confabulations...appear to hold water, psychoanalytically".

Freud developed his first topology of the psyche in ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1899) in which he proposed that the unconscious exists and described a method for gaining access to it. The preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought; its contents could be accessed with a little effort. One key factor in the operation of the unconscious is "repression". Freud believed that many people "repress" painful memories deep into their unconscious mind. Although Freud later attempted to find patterns of repression among his patients in order to derive a general model of the mind, he also observed that repression varies among individual patients. Freud also argued that the act of repression did not take place within a person's consciousness. Thus, people are unaware of the fact that they have buried memories or traumatic experiences.

Later, Freud distinguished between three concepts of the unconscious: the descriptive unconscious, the dynamic unconscious, and the system unconscious. The descriptive unconscious referred to all those features of mental life of which people are not subjectively aware. The dynamic unconscious, a more specific construct, referred to mental processes and contents that are defensively removed from consciousness as a result of conflicting attitudes. The system unconscious denoted the idea that when mental processes are repressed, they become organized by principles different from those of the conscious mind, such as condensation and displacement.

Eventually, Freud abandoned the idea of the system unconscious, replacing it with the concept of the id, ego, and super-ego. Throughout his career, however, he retained the descriptive and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious.

Psychosexual development

Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and thus turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus complex after the famous Greek tragedy ''Oedipus Rex'' by Sophocles. "I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood," Freud said. Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification (cf. ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality''). He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict. Freud also believed that the Oedipus complex was bisexual, involving an attraction to both parents

Traditional accounts have held that, as a result of frequent reports from his patients, in the mid-1890s Freud posited that psychoneuroses were a consequence of early childhood sexual abuse. More specifically, in three papers published in 1896 he contended that ''unconscious memories'' of sexual abuse in infancy are a necessary precondition for the development of adult psychoneuroses. However, examination of Freud's original papers has revealed that his clinical claims were not based on patients' reports but were findings deriving from his analytical clinical methodology, which at that time included coercive procedures. He privately expressed his loss of faith in the theory to his friend Fliess in September 1897, giving several reasons, including that he had not been able to bring a single case to a successful conclusion. In 1906, while still maintaining that his earlier claims to have uncovered early childhood sexual abuse events remained valid, he postulated a new theory of the occurrence of unconscious infantile fantasies. He had incorporated his notions of unconscious fantasies in ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1900), but did not explicitly relate his seduction theory claims to the Oedipus theory until 1925. Notwithstanding his abandonment of the seduction theory, Freud always recognized that some neurotics had experienced childhood sexual abuse.

Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object, a process codified by the concept of sublimation. He argued that humans are born "polymorphously perverse", meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued that, as humans develop, they become fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of development—first in the oral stage (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in evacuating his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage. In the latter stage, Freud contended, male infants become fixated on the mother as a sexual object (known as the Oedipus Complex), a phase brought to an end by threats of castration, resulting in the ''castration complex'', the severest trauma in his young life. (In his later writings Freud postulated an equivalent Oedipus situation for infant girls, the sexual fixation being on the father. Though not advocated by Freud himself, the term 'Electra complex' is sometimes used in this context.) The repressive or dormant latency stage of psychosexual development preceded the sexually mature genital stage of psychosexual development.

Id, ego, and super-ego

In his later work, Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. Freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', and fully elaborated upon it in ''The Ego and the Id'' (1923), in which he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (i.e., conscious, unconscious, and preconscious). The id is the impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and only takes into account what it wants and disregards all consequences.

Freud acknowledged that his use of the term ''Id'' (''das Es'', "the It") derives from the writings of Georg Groddeck.

The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation. The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical hedonism of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego; it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, it may employ defense mechanisms including denial, repression, and displacement. This concept is usually represented by the "Iceberg Model". This model represents the roles the Id, Ego, and Super Ego play in relation to conscious and unconscious thought.

Life and death drives

Freud believed that people are driven by two conflicting central desires: the life drive (libido or Eros) (survival, propagation, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive. The death drive was also termed "Thanatos", although Freud did not use that term; "Thanatos" was introduced in this context by Paul Federn.

In ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', Freud inferred the existence of the death instinct. Its premise was a regulatory principle that has been described as "the principle of psychic inertia", "the Nirvana principle", and "the conservatism of instinct". Its background was Freud's earlier ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'', where he had defined the principle governing the mental apparatus as its tendency to divest itself of quantity or to reduce tension to zero. Freud had been obliged to abandon that definition, since it proved to be adequate only to the most rudimentary kinds of mental functioning, and replaced the idea that the apparatus tends toward a level of zero tension with the idea that it tends toward a minimum level of tension.

Freud in effect readopted the original definition in ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', this time applying it to a different principle. He asserted that on certain occasions the mind acts as though could eliminate tension entirely, or in effect to reduce itself to a state of extinction; his key evidence for this was the existence of the compulsion to repeat. Examples of such repetition included the dream life of traumatic neurotics and children's play. In the phenomenon of repetition, Freud saw a psychic trend to work over earlier impressions, to master them and derive pleasure from them, a trend was prior to the pleasure principle but not opposed to it. In addition to that trend, however, there was also a principle at work that was opposed to, and thus "beyond" the pleasure principle. If repetition is a necessary element in the binding of energy or adaptation, when carried to inordinate lengths it becomes a means of abandoning adaptations and reinstating earlier or less evolved psychic positions. By combining this idea with the hypothesis that all repetition is a form of discharge, Freud reached the conclusion that the compulsion to repeat is an effort to restore a state that is both historically primitive and marked by the total draining of energy: death.

Religion

Freud regarded the monotheistic god as an illusion based upon the infantile emotional need for a powerful, supernatural pater familias. He maintained that religion – once necessary to restrain man’s violent nature in the early stages of civilization – in modern times, can be set aside in favor of reason and science. “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices” (1907) notes the likeness between faith (religious belief) and neurotic obsession. ''Totem and Taboo'' (1913) proposes that society and religion begin with the patricide and eating of the powerful paternal figure, who then becomes a revered collective memory. In ''Civilization and its Discontents'' (1930), he describes religion as an “oceanic sensation” he never experienced, (despite being a self-identified cultural Jew). ''Moses and Monotheism'' (1937) proposes that Moses was the tribal pater familias, killed by the Jews, who psychologically coped with the patricide with a reaction formation conducive to their establishing monotheist Judaism; analogously, he described the Roman Catholic rite of Holy Communion as cultural evidence of the killing and devouring of the sacred father. Moreover, he perceived religion, with its suppression of violence, as mediator of the societal and personal, the public and the private, conflicts between Eros and Thanatos, the forces of life and death. Later works indicate Freud’s pessimism about the future of civilization, which he noted in the 1931 edition of ''Civilization and its Discontents''.

Legacy

Psychotherapy

Freud provided the basis for the entire field of individual verbal psychotherapy. According to Donald H. Ford and Hugh B. Urban, "Later systems have differed about therapy and technique in certain respects, but all of them have been constructed around Freud's basic discovery that if one can arrange a special set of conditions and have the patient talk about his difficulties in certain ways, behavior changes of many kinds can be accomplished." For Joel Kovel, "Freud with his methods and central insight remains the progenitor of modern therapy", even though psychoanalysis itself has "sunk to a relatively minor role so far as actual therapeutic practice goes."

Jacques Lacan approached psychoanalysis through linguistics and literature. Lacan believed that Freud's essential work had been done prior to 1905, and concerned the interpretation of dreams, neurotic symptoms, and slips, which had been based on a revolutionary way of understanding language and its relation to experience and subjectivity. Lacan regarded ego psychology and object relations theory as based upon misreadings of Freud's work; for Lacan, the determinative dimension of human experience is neither the self (as in ego psychology) nor relations with others (as in object relations theory), but language. Lacan saw desire as more important than need, and considered it necessarily ungratifiable; in Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black's words, "for Lacan, the child comes to desire above all else to be the completing object of the m(other's) desire."

Wilhelm Reich developed ideas that Freud had developed at the beginning of his psychoanalytic investigation, but then superseded but never finally discarded; these were the concept of the Actualneurosis, and a theory of anxiety based upon the idea of dammed-up libido. In Freud's original view, what really happened to a person (the 'actual') determined the resulting neurotic disposition. Freud applied that idea both to infants and to adults; in the former case, seductions were sought as the causes of later neuroses, and in the latter incomplete sexual release. Unlike Freud, Reich retained the idea that actual experience, especially sexual experience, was of key significance. Kovel writes that by the 1920s, Reich had "taken Freud's original ideas about sexual release to the point of specifying the orgasm as the criteria of healthy function." Reich was also "developing his ideas about character into a form that would later take shape, first as 'muscular armour', and eventually as a transducer of universal biological energy, the ''orgone''."

Arthur Janov's primal therapy has been an influential post-Freudian psychotherapy. Joel Kovel writes that primal therapy resembles psychoanalytic therapy in its emphasis on early childhood experience, but nevertheless has profound differences with it. While Janov's theory is akin to Freud's early idea of Actualneurosis, he does not have a dynamic psychology but a nature psychology in which need is primary while wish is derivative and dispensable when need is met. Despite its surface similarity to Freud's ideas, Janov's theory lacks a strictly psychological account of the unconscious and belief in infantile sexuality. While for Freud there was a hierarchy of danger situations, for Janov the key event in the child's life is awareness that the parents do not love it. Mark Pendergrast writes that Janov provided the prototype for the current trauma therapist.

Journalist Ethan Watters and Professor of Sociology Richard Ofshe write, "There is no scientific evidence of...[a] purposeful unconscious, nor is there evidence that psychotherapists have special methods for laying bare our out-of-awareness mental processes." They also write that, "Because of the massive investment the field of psychotherapy has made in the psychodynamic approach, the dying convulsions of the paradigm will not be pretty."

Science

Verdicts on the scientific merits of Freud's theories have differed. Gilbert Ryle calls Freud "psychology's one man of genius" and the influence of his teaching "deservedly profound" even though its allegories have been "damagingly popular", while David Stafford-Clark calls him "a man whose name will always rank with those of Darwin, Copernicus, Newton, Marx and Einstein; someone who really made a difference to the way the rest of us can begin to think about the meaning of human life and society." Seymour Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg write that, "A reservoir of experimental data pertinent to Freud's work currently exists and...offers support for a respectable number of his major ideas and theories." In contrast, Eysenck claims that Freud "set psychiatry back one hundred years" and that "what is true in his theories is not new and what is new in his theories is not true", Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, made the oft-quoted remark that psychoanalysis is the "most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century", and Webster calls it "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudoscience in history. Crews writes that "Step by step, we are learning that Freud has been the most overrated figure in the entire history of science and medicine—one who wrought immense harm through the propagation of false etiologies, mistaken diagnoses, and fruitless lines of inquiry."

Karl Popper, who argued that all proper scientific theories must be potentially falsifiable, claimed that Freud's psychoanalytic theories were presented in unfalsifiable form, meaning that no experiment or observation could ever prove them wrong. Grünbaum considers Popper's critique of Freud flawed, and argues that many of Freud's theories are empirically testable, for example the theory that paranoia results from repressed homosexuality invites the falsifiable prediction that a decline in the repression of homosexuality will result in a corresponding decline in paranoia, thereby disproving Popper's claim that psychoanalytic propositions can never be proven wrong. However, Grünbaum's view has in turn been challenged from different perspectives. Gellner describes Freudian psychoanalysis as "an inherently untestable system [that] can and does often permit a kind of ''ex gratia'' testing, on the understanding that this privilege remains easily revocable at will and short notice". Frank Cioffi and Allen Esterson both dispute Grünbaum's contentions that Freud was "hospitable to refutation" and his modifications of his theories as a rule "clearly motivated by evidence", arguing that his exegesis of Freud's writings is flawed on this issue.

According to a study that appeared in the June 2008 issue of ''The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association'', while psychoanalysis remains influential in the humanities, it is regarded as "desiccated and dead" by psychology departments and textbooks. ''The New York Times'' commented that to psychoanalysts the report underscores "pressing questions about the relevance of their field and whether it will survive as a practice", noting that the marginalization of Freudian theory in psychology departments has been attributed to psychoanalysts being out of step with the way in which other disciplines in psychology have placed "emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically." Meanwhile, advances in neuroscience have "attracted new students and resources, further squeezing out psychoanalysis."

Researchers in the emerging field of neuro-psychoanalysis, founded by neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms, have argued for Freud's theories, pointing out brain structures relating to Freudian concepts such as libido, drives, the unconscious, and repression. However, Solms's case is frequently dependent on the notion of neuro-scientific findings being "broadly consistent" with Freudian theories, rather than strict validations of those theories. More generally the dream researcher G. William Domhoff has disputed claims of ''specifically'' Freudian dream theory being validated as contended by Solms. There has also been criticism of the very concept of neuro-psychoanalysis by psychoanalysts.

Philosophy

Freud's theories have influenced the Frankfurt School and critical theory. Herbert Marcuse's ''Eros and Civilization'' helped make the idea that Freud and Marx were "speaking to similar questions, if from very different vantage points" credible to the left. Marcuse criticized neo-Freudian revisionism for discarding the death instinct, the primal horde, and the killing of the primal father, which he saw as Freud's most daring hypotheses and possessed of symbolic value, and for flattening out the conflicts between individual and society and between instinctual desires and consciousness, which he saw as a conformist return to pre-Freudian psychology. Rejecting the idea that the death instinct meant an innate urge to aggression, Marcuse interpreted it instead as aiming at the end of the tension that is life. For Marcuse, since it was based on the so-called Nirvana principle, which expressed yearning for the tranquility of inorganic nature, the death instinct was similar in its goals to the life instinct. Marcuse argued that if the tension of life were reduced, the death instinct would cease to be very powerful, thereby turning Freud's seemingly pessimistic conclusions in a utopian direction.

Erich Fromm identifies Freud, together with Karl Marx and Albert Einstein, as the "architects of the modern age", while nevertheless remarking, "That Marx is a figure of world historical significance with whom Freud cannot even be compared in this respect hardly needs to be said." For Paul Robinson, Freud "rendered for the twentieth century services comparable to those Marx rendered for the nineteenth."

Maurice Merleau-Ponty considers Freud, like Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, to be one of the anticipators of phenomenology. Theodor W. Adorno writes that Freud was Edmund Husserl's "opposite number...against the entire claim and tendency of whose psychology Husserl's polemic against psychologism could have been directed." Paul Ricoeur sees Freud as one of the masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Marx and Nietzsche. Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas have helped create "a distinctly hermeneutic version of Freud", one which "claimed him as the most significant progenitor of the shift from an objectifying, empiricist understanding of the human realm to one stressing subjectivity and interpretation." Their hermeneutic interpretation of Freud has been criticized by Adolf Grünbaum, who argues that it radically misrepresents Freud's views.

Jacques Derrida finds Freud to be both a late figure in the history of western metaphysics and, with Nietzsche and Heidegger, an important precursor of his own brand of radicalism.

Bernard Williams writes that there has been hope that some psychoanalytical theories may "support some ethical conception as a necessary part of human happiness", but that in some cases the theories appear to support such hopes because they themselves involve ethical thought. In his view, while such theories may be better as channels of individual help because of their ethical basis, it disqualifies them from providing a basis for ethics.

Feminism

Robinson, observing that "Everyone knows that Freud has fallen from grace", suggests that the disenchantment with Freud can be traced to the revival of feminism. Simone de Beauvoir criticized Freud and psychoanalysis in ''The Second Sex''. Betty Friedan criticized Freud and what she considered his Victorian view of women in ''The Feminine Mystique''. Freud's concept of penis envy was attacked by Kate Millett, whose ''Sexual Politics'' accused him of confusion and oversights. Naomi Weisstein writes that Freud and his followers erroneously thought that his "years of intensive clinical experience" added up to scientific rigor. Freud was also criticized by Shulamith Firestone and Eva Figes. In ''The Dialectic of Sex'', Firestone argued that Freud was a "poet" who produced metaphors rather than literal truths; in her view, Freud, like feminists, recognized that sexuality was the crucial problem of modern life, but ignored the social context and failed to question society itself. Firestone interpreted Freudian "metaphors" in terms of the literal facts of power within the family. Juliet Mitchell defended Freud against de Beauvoir, Friedan, Millett, Figes, and Firestone in ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism'', accusing them of misreading him and misunderstanding the implications of psychoanalytic theory for feminism. Mitchell's views were in turn criticized by Jane Gallop in ''The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis''. Gallop complements Mitchell for her criticism of "the distortions inflicted by feminists upon Freud's text and his discoveries", but finds her treatment of Lacanian theory lacking.

Some French feminists, among them Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, have been influenced by Freud as interpreted by Jacques Lacan. Irigaray has produced a theoretical challenge to Freud and Lacan, using their theories against them to "put forward a coherent psychoanalytic explanation for theoretical bias. She claims that the cultural unconscious only recognizes the male sex, and details the effects of this unconscious belief on accounts of the psychology of women."

Carol Gilligan writes that "The penchant of developmental theorists to project a masculine image, and one that appears frightening to women, goes back at least to Freud..." She sees Freud's criticism of women's sense of justice reappearing in the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Gilligan notes that Nancy Chodorow, in contrast to Freud, attributes differences between the sexes not to anatomy but to the fact that "the early social environment differs for and is experienced differently by male and female children." Chodorow writes "against the masculine bias of psychoanalytic theory" and "replaces Freud's negative and derivative description of female psychology with a positive and direct account of her own."

Works

Major works by Freud

''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works'' of Sigmund Freud, translated from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey. In collaboration with Anna Freud. Assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson, 24 volumes, Vintage, 1999

''Studies on Hysteria'' (with Josef Breuer) (''Studien über Hysterie'', 1895)

''The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904'', Publisher: Belknap Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-674-15421-6

''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (''Die Traumdeutung'', 1899 [1900]) ISBN 978-0-465-01977-9

''The Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (''Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens'', 1901) ISBN 978-1-4565-6856-6

''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (''Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie'', 1905)

''Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious'' (''Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten'', 1905)

''Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva (''Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva'', 1907)

''Totem and Taboo'' (''Totem und Tabu'', 1913)

''On Narcissism'' (''Zur Einführung des Narzißmus'', 1914)

''Introduction to Psychoanalysis'' (''Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse'', 1917)

''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'' (''Jenseits des Lustprinzips'', 1920)

''The Ego and the Id'' (''Das Ich und das Es'', 1923)

''The Future of an Illusion'' (''Die Zukunft einer Illusion'', 1927)

''Civilization and Its Discontents'' (''Das Unbehagen in der Kultur'', 1930)

''Moses and Monotheism'' (''Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion'', 1939)

''An Outline of Psycho-Analysis'' (''Abriß der Psychoanalyse'', 1940)

Correspondence

'' The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis'' (eds. E. J. Lieberman and Robert Kramer). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Sigmund-Freud-Otto-Rank/dp/1421403544

''The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, (editor and translator Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson), 1985, ISBN 978-0-674-15420-9

''The Sigmund Freud Carl Gustav Jung Letters'', Publisher: Princeton University Press; Abr edition, 1994, ISBN 978-0-691-03643-4

''The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1925'', Publisher: Karnac Books, 2002, ISBN 978-1-85575-051-7

''The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908–1939.'', Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-674-15424-7

''The Sigmund Freud Ludwig Binswanger Letters'', Publisher: Open Gate Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-871871-45-6

''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 1, 1908–1914'', Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-674-17418-4

''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2, 1914–1919'', Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-674-17419-1

''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 3, 1920–1933'', Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-674-00297-5

''The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881'', Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-52828-4

''Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salome; letters'', Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1972, ISBN 978-0-15-133490-2

''The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig'', Publisher: New York University Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8147-2585-6

''Letters of Sigmund Freud – selected and edited by Ernst Ludwig Freud'', Publisher: New York: Basic Books, 1960, ISBN 978-0-486-27105-7

Other works and essays

''Reflections on War and Death'' (''Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod'', 1918)

See also

A Dangerous Method

Afterwardsness

American Psychoanalytic Association

Dark City (1998 film)

Dostoevsky and Parricide

Edward Bernays

Freud and religion

Freud: The Secret Passion

Freud's seduction theory

Freudian slip

Freudo-Marxism

History of the Jews in Galicia (Eastern Europe)

Neo-Freudian

Psychoanalytic literary criticism

Psychoanalytic theory

Psychodynamics

Psychosexual development

Sigmund Freud Archives

Sigmund Freud Museum (London)

Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna)

Sigmund Freud's views on homosexuality

Signorelli parapraxis

The Century of the Self (related documentary)

The Death of Salvador Dali

The Mark Steel Lectures – Freud

References

Further reading

Substantial biographies

Authorized biography

Jones, Ernest. ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.'' 3 vols. New York: Basic Books, 1953–1957

Other biographies

Gay, Peter. ''Freud: A Life for Our Time.'' London: Papermac, 1988; 2nd revised hardcover edition, Little Books (1 May 2006), 864 pages, ISBN 978-1904435532; Reprint hardcover edition, W. W. Norton & Company (1988); trade paperback, W. W. Norton & Company (17 May 2006), 864 pages, ISBN 978-0393328615

Puner, Helen Walker. ''Freud: His Life and His Mind.'' New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1947

Roazen, Paul. ''Freud and His Followers.'' New York: Knopf, 1975, hardcover; trade paperback, De Capo Press (22 March 1992), 600 pages, ISBN 978-0306804724

Other works about Freud and the psychoanalytic movement

Cioffi, Frank. ''Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience.'' Peru, IL: Open Court, 1999.

Crews, Frederick. ''The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute.'' New York: The New York Review of Books, 1995.

Crews, Frederick. ''Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend.'' New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

Dufresne, Todd. ''Killing Freud: Twentieth-Century Culture and the Death of Psychoanalysis.'' New York: Continuum, 2003.

Dufresne, Todd, ed. ''Against Freud: Critics Talk Back.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Ellenberger, Henri. ''Beyond the Unconscious: Essays of Henri F. Ellenberger in the History of Psychiatry.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Ellenberger, Henri. ''The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry.'' New York: Basic Books, 1970.

Esterson, Allen. ''Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud.'' Chicago: Open Court, 1993.

Gellner, Ernest. ''The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason.'' London: Fontana Press, 1993.

Grünbaum, Adolf. ''The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Grünbaum, Adolf. ''Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis.'' Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, 1993.

Hale, Nathan G., Jr. ''Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Hale, Nathan G., Jr. ''The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985.'' New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Hirschmüller, Albrecht. ''The Life and Work of Josef Breuer.'' New York University Press, 1989.

Jung, Carl Gustav. ''The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis.'' Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961.

Macmillan, Malcolm. ''Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc.'' Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997.

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. ''The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory.'' New York: Pocket Books, 1998

Ricoeur, Paul. ''Freud and Philosophy.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

Rieff, Philip. ''Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.'' Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1961

Roazen, Paul. ''Freud: Political and Social Thought.'' London: Hogarth Press, 1969.

Roth, Michael, ed. ''Freud: Conflict and Culture.'' New York: Vintage, 1998.

Stannard, David E. ''Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Sulloway, Frank J. ''Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend.'' London: Basic Books, 1979

Webster, Richard. ''Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis.'' Oxford: The Orwell Press, 2005.

Wollheim, Richard. ''Freud.'' Fontana, 1971.

Wollheim, Richard, and James Hopkins, eds. ''Philosophical Essays on Freud.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

External links

, made in 1938

''Dream Psychology'' by Sigmund Freud

Essays by Freud at Quotidiana.org

Freud Archives at Library of Congress

Freud Museum, Maresfield Gardens, London

International Network of Freud Critics

International Psychoanalytical Association, founded by Freud in 1910

Sigmund Freud Collection at Bartleby.com (15 works in English)

Works by Sigmund Freud (public domain in Canada)

Works by Sigmund Freud in audio format from LibriVox

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Coordinates	43°35′07″N39°43′13″N
name	Swami Vivekananda
birth date	January 12, 1863 Monday
birth place	Kolkata, Bengal, India
birth name	Narendranatha Dutta
death date	July 04, 1902 Friday
death place	Belur Math near Kolkata
guru	Ramakrishna Paramahansa
disciple	Swami Sadananda, Sister Nivedita
philosophy	Vedanta
founder	Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
literary works	Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga
influenced	Subhash Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghose, Bagha Jatin, Mahatma Gandhi, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Jamshedji Tata
quote	''Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.''
signature	Vivekananda_Sig.jpg
footnotes	}}

Swami Vivekananda (, ; ) (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Dutta (, ), was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. He is considered a key figure in the introduction of Hindu philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the "Western" World, mainly in America and Europe and is also credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the end of the 19th century C.E.. Vivekananda is considered to be a major force in the revival of Hinduism in modern India. He is perhaps best known for his inspiring speech beginning with "Sisters and Brothers of America", through which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's Religions at Chicago in 1893.

Swami Vivekananda was born in an aristocratic Bengali family of Calcutta on January 12, 1863. Swami's parents influenced his thinking—the father by his rational mind and the mother by her religious temperament. From his childhood, he showed inclination towards spirituality and God realization. As a guru, Ramakrishna taught him ''Advaita Vedanta'' (non-dualism) and that all religions are true, and service to man was the most effective worship of God. After the death of his Guru, Vivekananda became a wandering monk, touring the Indian subcontinent and getting first-hand knowledge of India's condition. He later sailed to Chicago and represented India as a delegate in the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. He conducted hundreds of public and private lectures and classes, disseminating Vedanta and Yoga in America, England and a few other countries in Europe. He also established the Vedanta societies in America and England.

Early life (1863-1888)

Birth and childhood

Swami Vivekananda was born in Shimla Pally, Calcutta (presently known as Kolkata) on 12 January 1863, Monday at 6:49 A.M., during the Makara Sankranti festival in a traditional Kayastha family, and was given the name Narendranath Dutta. His father Viswanath Dutta was an attorney of Calcutta High Court. He was considered generous, and had a liberal and progressive outlook in social and religious matters. His mother Bhuvaneshwari Devi was pious and had practiced austerities and prayed to ''Vireshwar Shiva'' of Varanasi to give her a son. She reportedly had a dream in which Shiva rose from his meditation and said that he would be born as her son. Narendranath's thinking and personality were influenced by his parents—the father by his rational mind and the mother by her religious temperament. From his mother he learnt the power of self-control. One of the sayings of his mother Narendranath quoted often in his later years was, "Remain pure all your life; guard your own honor and never transgress the honor of others. Be very tranquil, but when necessary, harden your heart." He was reportedly adept in meditation and could reportedly enter the state of ''samadhi''. He reportedly would see a light while falling asleep and he reportedly had a vision of Buddha during his meditation. During his childhood, he had a great fascination for wandering ascetics and monks.

Narendranath had varied interests and a wide range of scholarship in philosophy, religion, history, the social sciences, arts, literature, and other subjects. He evinced much interest in the Hindu scriptures like the ''Vedas'', the ''Upanishads'', the ''Bhagavad Gita'', the ''Ramayana'', the ''Mahabharata'' and the ''Puranas''. He was also well versed in classical music, both vocal and instrumental and is said to have undergone training under two Ustads, Beni Gupta and Ahamad Khan. Since boyhood, he took an active interest in physical exercise, sports, and other organizational activities. Even when he was young, he questioned the validity of superstitious customs and discrimination based on caste and refused to accept anything without rational proof and pragmatic test.

When his father moved to Raipur in 1877 for 2 years then Narendranath along with the whole family shifted there. At that time there were no good schools in Raipur so he spent his time with his father and had discussions on spiritual topics. Narendranath learned Hindi in Raipur and for the first time the Question of existence of God came to his mind. It is believed that once he experienced an ecstasy during this period of life. The family returned to Calcutta in 1879 but it is believed that these 2 years were the turning point in his life. Raipur is sometimes termed as the "Spiritual Birthplace" of Swami Vivekananda.

College and Brahmo Samaj

Narendranath started his education at home, later he joined the Metropolitan Institution of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in 1871 and in 1879 he passed the entrance examination for Presidency College, Calcutta, entering it for a brief period and subsequently shifting to General Assembly's Institution. During the course, he studied western logic, western philosophy and history of European nations. In 1881 he passed the Fine Arts examination and in 1884 he passed the Bachelor of Arts.

Narendranath is said to have studied the writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Baruch Spinoza, Georg W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and Charles Darwin. Narendra became fascinated with the Evolutionism of Herbert Spencer, and translated Spencer's book on ''Education'' into Bengali for Gurudas Chattopadhyaya, his publisher. Narendra also had correspondence with Herbert Spencer for some time. Alongside his study of Western philosophers, he was thoroughly acquainted with Indian Sanskrit scriptures and many Bengali works. According to his professors, student Narendranath was a prodigy. Dr. William Hastie, the principal of Scottish Church College, where he studied during 1881-84, wrote, "Narendra is really a genius. I have travelled far and wide but I have never come across a lad of his talents and possibilities, even in German universities, among philosophical students." He was regarded as a ''srutidhara''—a man with prodigious memory. After a discussion with Narendranath, Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar reportedly said, "I could never have thought that such a young boy had read so much!"

Narendranath became the member of a Freemason's lodge and the breakaway faction from the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen. His initial beliefs were shaped by Brahmo concepts, which include belief in a formless God and deprecation of the worship of idols. Not satisfied with his knowledge of Philosophy, he wondered if God and religion could be made a part of one's growing experiences and deeply internalized. Narendra went about asking prominent residents of contemporary Calcutta whether they had come "face to face with God". but could not get answers which satisfied him.

His first introduction to Ramakrishna occurred in a literature class in General Assembly's Institution, when he heard Principal Reverend W. Hastie lecturing on William Wordsworth's poem ''The Excursion'' and the poet's nature-mysticism. In the course of explaining the word ''trance'' in the poem, Hastie told his students that if they wanted to know the real meaning of it, they should go to Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar. This prompted some of his students, including Narendranath to visit Ramakrishna.

With Ramakrishna

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Narendranath's meeting with Ramakrishna in November 1881 proved to be a turning point in his life. About this meeting, Narendranath said, "He Ramakrishna looked just like an ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him. He used the most simple language and I thought "Can this man be a great teacher?". I crept near to him and asked him the question which I had been asking others all my life: "Do you believe in God, Sir?" "Yes", he replied. "Can you prove it, Sir?" "Yes". "How?" "Because I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense." That impressed me at once. […] I began to go to that man, day after day, and I actually saw that religion could be given. One touch, one glance, can change a whole life." Even though Narendra did not accept Ramakrishna as his guru initially and revolted against his ideas, he was attracted by his personality and visited him frequently. He initially looked upon Ramakrishna's ecstasies and visions as, "mere figments of imagination", "mere hallucinations". As a member of Brahmo samaj, he revolted against idol worship and polytheism, and Ramakrishna's worship of Kali. He even rejected the ''Advaitist Vedantism'' of identity with absolute as blasphemy and madness, and often made fun of the concept

Though at first Narendra could not accept Ramakrishna and his visions, he could not neglect him either. It had always been in Narendra's nature to test something thoroughly before he would accept it. He tested Ramakrishna, who never asked Narendra to abandon reason, and faced all of Narendra's arguments and examinations with patience—"Try to see the truth from all angles" was his reply. During the course of five years of his training under Ramakrishna, Narendra was transformed from a restless, puzzled, impatient youth to a mature man who was ready to renounce everything for the sake of God-realization. In time, Narendra accepted Ramakrishna as guru, and when he accepted, his acceptance was whole-hearted and with complete surrendering as disciple.

In 1885 Ramakrishna suffered from throat cancer and he was shifted to Calcutta and later to Cossipore. Vivekananda and his brother disciples took care of Ramakrishna during his final days. Vivekananda's spiritual education under Ramakrishna continued there. At Cossipore, Vivekananda reportedly experienced ''Nirvikalpa Samadhi''. During the last days of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and some of the other disciples received the ochre monastic robes from Ramakrishna, which formed the first monastic order of Ramakrishna. Vivekananda was taught that service to men was the most effective worship of God. It is reported that when Vivekananda doubted Ramakrishna's claim of ''avatar'', Ramakrishna reportedly said, "He who was Rama, He who was Krishna, He himself is now Ramakrishna in this body." During his final days, Ramakrishna asked Vivekananda to take care of other monastic disciples and in turn asked them to look upon Vivekananda as their leader. Ramakrishna's condition worsened gradually and he expired in the early morning hours of August 16, 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. According to his disciples, this was ''Mahasamadhi''.

Founding of the Ramakrishna Math

After the death of their master, the monastic disciples led by Vivekananda formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Baranagar near the river Ganges, with the financial assistance of the householder disciples. This became the first building of the Ramakrishna Math, or the monastery of the disciples who constituted the first monastic order of Sri Ramakrishna.

The dilapidated house at Baranagar was chosen because of its low rent and proximity to the Cossipore burning-ghat, where Ramakrishna was cremated. Narendra and other members of the Math often spent their time in meditation, discussing about different philosophies and teachings of spiritual teachers including Ramakrishna, Adi Shankara, Ramanuja, and Jesus Christ. Narendra reminisced about the early days in the monastery as follows- In the early part of 1887, Narendra and eight other disciples took formal monastic vows. Narendra took the name of ''Swami Bibidishananda''. Later he was coronated with the name ''Vivekananda'' by Ajit Singh, the Maharaja of Khetri.

In January 1899 the ''Baranagar Math'' was shifted a newly acquired plot of land at Belur in the district of Howrah, now famous as the Belur Math.

As a wandering monk in India (1888-1893)

In 1888, Vivekananda left the monastery as a ''Parivrâjaka''—the Hindu religious life of a wandering monk, "without fixed abode, without ties, independent and strangers wherever they go." His sole possessions were a ''kamandalu'' (water pot), staff, and his two favorite books—''Bhagavad Gita'' and ''The Imitation of Christ''. Narendranath travelled the length and breadth of India for five years, visiting important centers of learning, acquainting himself with the diverse religious traditions and different patterns of social life. He developed a sympathy for the suffering and poverty of the masses and resolved to uplift the nation. Living mainly on Bhiksha or alms, Narendranath traveled mostly on foot and railway tickets bought by his admirers whom he met during the travels. During these travels he gained acquaintance and stayed with scholars, Dewans, Rajas and people from all walks of life—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, ''Pariah''s (low caste workers) and Government officials.

;Northern India In 1888, he started his journey from Varanasi. At Varanasi, he met pandit and Bengali writer, Bhudev Mukhopadhyay and Trailanga Swami, a famous saint who lived in a Shiva temple. Here, he also met Babu Pramadadas Mitra, the noted Sanskrit scholar, to whom the Swami wrote a number of letters asking his advice on the interpretation of the Hindu scriptures. After Varanasi he visited Ayodhya, Lucknow, Agra, Vrindavan, Hathras and Rishikesh. At Hathras he met Sharat Chandra Gupta, the station master who later became one of his earliest disciples as ''Sadananda''. Between 1888-1890, he visited Vaidyanath, Allahabad. From Allahabad, he visited Ghazipur where he met Pavhari Baba, a ''Advaita Vedanta'' ascetic who spent most of his time in meditation. Between 1888-1890, he returned to Baranagore ''Math'' few times, because of ill health and to arrange for the financial funds when Balaram Bose and Suresh Chandra Mitra, the disciples of Ramakrishna who supported the ''Math'' had expired.

;The Himalayas In July 1890, accompanied by his brother monk, Swami Akhandananda, he continued his journey as a wandering monk and returned to the ''Math'' only after his visit to the West. He visited, Nainital, Almora, Srinagar, Dehradun, Rishikesh, Haridwar and the Himalayas. During this travel, he reportedly had a vision of macrocosm and microcosm, which seems to be reflected in the ''Jnana Yoga'' lectures he gave later in the West, "''The Cosmos''—''The Macrocosm'' and ''The Microcosm''". During these travels, he met his brother monks —Swami Brahmananda, Saradananda, Turiyananda, Akhandananda and Advaitananda. They stayed at Meerut for a few days where they passed their time in meditation, prayer and study of scriptures. At the end of January 1891, the Swami left his brother monks and journeyed to Delhi alone.

;Rajputana At Delhi, after visiting historical places he journeyed towards Alwar, in the historic land of Rajputana. Later he journeyed to Jaipur, where he studied Panini's ''Ashtadhyayi'' with a Sanskrit scholar. He next journeyed to Ajmer, where he visited the palace of Akbar and the famous Dargah and left for Mount Abu. At Mount Abu, he met the maharaja, Ajit Singh of Khetri, who became his ardent devotee and supporter. Swami Tathagatananda, a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and the Head of Vedanta Society, New York wrote as follows :

At Khetri, he delivered discourses to the Raja, became acquainted with the pandit Ajjada Adibhatla Narayana Dasu, and studied ''Mahābhāṣya'' on sutras of Panini. After two and a half months there, towards the end of October 1891, he proceeded towards Rajasthan and Maharastra.

; Western India Continuing his travels, he visited Ahmedabad, Wadhwan, Limbdi. At Ahmedabad he completed his studies of Muslim and Jain culture. At Limbdi, he met Thakore Sahed Jaswant Singh who had himself been to England and America. From the Thakore Saheb, the Swami first got the idea of going to the West to preach Vedanta. He later visited Junagadh, where he was the guest of Haridas Desai, the Dewan of the State, who was so charmed with his company that every evening he, with all the State officials, used to meet the Swami and converse with him until late at night. From there he also visited Girnar, Kutch, Porbander, Dwaraka, Palitana, Nadiad where he stayed at Diwan Haridas Desai's house Nadiad ni haveli and Baroda. At Porbander he stayed three quarters of a year, in spite of his vow as a wandering monk, to perfect his philosophical and Sanskrit studies with learned ''pandit''s; he worked with a court ''pandit'' who translated the ''Vedas''.

He later traveled to Mahabaleshwar and then to Pune. From Pune he visited Khandwa and Indore around June 1892. At Kathiawar he heard of the Parliament of the World's Religions and was urged by his followers there to attend it. He left Khandwa for Bombay and reached there on July 1892. In a Pune bound train he met Bal Gangadhar Tilak. After staying with Tilak for few days in Poona, the Swami travelled to Belgaum in October 1892. At Belgaum, he was the guest of Prof. G.S. Bhate and Sub-divisional Forest officer, Haripada Mitra. From Belgaum, he visited Panjim and Margao in Goa. He spent three days in the Rachol Seminary, the oldest convent-college of theology of Goa where rare religious literature in manuscripts and printed works in Latin are preserved. He reportedly studied important Christian theological works here. From Margao the Swami went by train to Dharwar, and from there directly to Bangalore, in Mysore State.

; Southern India At Bangalore, the Swami became acquainted with Sir K. Seshadri Iyer, the Dewan of Mysore state, and later he stayed at the palace as guest of the Maharaja of Mysore, Chamaraja Wodeyar. Regarding the Swami's learning, Sir Seshadri reportedly remarked, "a magnetic personality and a divine force which were destined to leave their mark on the history of his country." The Maharaja provided the Swami a letter of introduction to the Dewan of Cochin and got him a railway ticket.

From Bangalore, he visited Trichur, Kodungalloor, Ernakulam. At Ernakulam, he met Chattampi Swamikal, contemporary of Narayana Guru in early December 1892. From Ernakulam, he journeyed to Trivandrum, Nagercoil and reached Kanyakumari on foot during the Christmas Eve of 1892. At Kanyakumari, the Swami reportedly meditated on the "last bit of Indian rock", famously known later as the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, for three days. At Kanyakumari, Vivekananda had the "Vision of one India", also commonly called "The Kanyakumari resolve of 1892". He wrote,

From Kanyakumari he visited Madurai, where he met the Raja of Ramnad, Bhaskara Setupati, to whom he had a letter of introduction. The Raja became the Swami's disciple and urged him to go to the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. From Madurai, he visited Rameshwaram, Pondicherry, he travelled to Madras and here he met some his most devoted disciples, who played important roles in collecting funds for Swami's voyage to America and later in establishing the Ramakrishna Mission in Madras. With the aid of funds collected by his Madras disciples and Rajas of Mysore, Ramnad, Khetri, Dewans and other followers Vivekananda left for Chicago on 31 May 1893 from Bombay assuming the name ''Vivekananda''—the name suggested by the Maharaja of Khetri.

Visit to Japan (1893)

On his way to Chicago, Vivekananda visited Japan in 1893. He first reached the port city of Nagasaki, and then boarded a steamer to Kobe. From here to took the land route to Yokohama, visiting along the way, the three big cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. He called the Japanese "one of the cleanest people on earth", and was impressed not only by neatness of their streets and dwellings but also by their movements, attitudes and gestures, all of which he found to be "picturesque".

This was a period of rapid military build-up in Japan - a prelude to the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. These preparations did not escape the attention of Vivekananda, who wrote - "The Japanese seem now to have fully awakened themselves to the necessity of the present times. They have now a thoroughly organized army equipped with guns which one of their own officers has invented and which is said to be second to none. Then, they are continually increasing their navy". About the industrial progress he observed, "The match factories are simply a sight to see, and they are bent upon making everything they want in their own country.".

Contrasting the rapid progress of Japan with the situation back in India, he urged his countrymen - the "offspring of centuries of superstition and tyranny" - to come out of their narrow holes and have a look abroad -

First visit to the West (1893-1897)

His journey to America took him through China, Canada and he arrived at Chicago in July 1893. But to his disappointment he learnt that no one without credentials from a ''bona fide'' organization would be accepted as a delegate. He came in contact with Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University. After inviting him to speak at Harvard and on learning from him not having credentials to speak at the Parliament, Wright is quoted as having said, "To ask for your credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine in the heavens." Wright then addressed a letter to the Chairman in charge of delegates writing, "Here is a man who is more learned than all of our learned professors put together." On the Professor, Vivekananda himself writes "He urged upon me the necessity of going to the Parliament of Religions, which he thought would give an introduction to the nation."

Parliament of World's Religions

The Parliament of Religions opened on 11 September 1893 at the Art Institute of Chicago. On this day Vivekananda gave his first brief address. He represented India and Hinduism. Though initially nervous, he bowed to ''Saraswati'', the goddess of learning and began his speech with, "Sisters and brothers of America!". To these words he got a standing ovation from a crowd of seven thousand, which lasted for two minutes. When silence was restored he began his address. He greeted the youngest of the nations in the name of "the most ancient order of monks in the world, the Vedic order of sannyasins, a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance." And he quoted two illustrative passages in this relation, from the ''Bhagavad Gita''—"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!" and "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me." Despite being a short speech, it voiced the spirit of the Parliament and its sense of universality.

Dr. Barrows, the president of the Parliament said, "India, the Mother of religions was represented by Swami Vivekananda, the Orange-monk who exercised the most wonderful influence over his auditors." He attracted widespread attention in the press, which dubbed him as the "Cyclonic monk from India". The ''New York Critique'' wrote, "He is an orator by divine right, and his strong, intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than those earnest words, and the rich, rhythmical utterance he gave them." The ''New York Herald'' wrote, "Vivekananda is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation." The American newspapers reported Swami Vivekananda as "the greatest figure in the parliament of religions" and "the most popular and influential man in the parliament".

He spoke several more times at the Parliament on topics related to Hinduism and Buddhism. The parliament ended on 27 September 1893. All his speeches at the Parliament had one common theme—Universality—and stressed religious tolerance.

Lecturing tours in America and England

|align=right|width=20%}} After the Parliament of Religions, held in September 1893 at The Art Institute of Chicago, Vivekananda spent nearly two whole years lecturing in various parts of eastern and central United States, appearing chiefly in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and New York. By the spring of 1895, he was weary and in poor health, because of his continuous exertion. After suspending his lecture tour, the Swami started giving free and private classes on Vedanta and Yoga. In June 1895, for two months he conducted private lectures to a dozen of his disciples at the Thousand Island Park. Vivekananda considered this to be the happiest part of his first visit to America. He later founded the "Vedanta Society of New York".

During his first visit to America, he traveled to England twice—in 1895 and 1896. His lectures were successful there. Here he met Miss Margaret Noble, an Irish lady, who later became Sister Nivedita. During his second visit in May 1896, while living at a house in Pimlico, the Swami met Max Müller a renowned Indologist at Oxford University who wrote Ramakrishna's first biography in the West. From England, he also visited other European countries. In Germany he met Paul Deussen, another famous Indologist.

He also received two academic offers, the chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard University and a similar position at Columbia University. He declined both, saying that, as a wandering monk, he could not settle down to work of this kind.

He attracted several sincere followers. Among his other followers were, Josephine MacLeod, Miss Müller, Miss Noble, E.T. Sturdy, Captain and Mrs. Sevier—who played an important role in the founding of Advaita Ashrama and J.J. Goodwin—who became his stenographer and recorded his teachings and lectures. The Hale family became one of his warmest hosts in America. His disciples—Madame Louise, a French woman, became Swami Abhayananda, and Mr. Leon Landsberg, became Swami Kripananda. He initiated several other followers into Brahmacharya.

Swami Vivekananda's ideas were admired by several scholars and famous thinkers—William James, Josiah Royce, C. C. Everett, Dean of the Harvard School of Divinity, Robert G. Ingersoll, Nikola Tesla, Lord Kelvin, and Professor Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz. Other personalities who were attracted by his talks were Harriet Monroe and Ella Wheeler Wilcox—two famous American poets, Professor William James of Harvard University; Dr. Lewis G. Janes, president of Brooklyn Ethical Association; Sara C. Bull, wife of Ole Bull, the Norwegian violinist; Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress and Madame Emma Calvé, the French opera singer.

From West, he also set his Indian work in motion. Vivekananda wrote a stream of letters to India, giving advice and sending money to his followers and brother monks. His letters from the West in these days laid down the motive of his campaign for social service. He constantly tried to inspire his close disciples in India to do something big. His letters to them contain some of his strongest words. In one such letter, he wrote to Swami Akhandananda, "Go from door to door amongst the poor and lower classes of the town of Khetri and teach them religion. Also, let them have oral lessons on geography and such other subjects. No good will come of sitting idle and having princely dishes, and saying "Ramakrishna, O Lord!"—unless you can do some good to the poor." Eventually in 1895, the periodical called ''Brahmavadin'' was started in Madras, with the money supplied by Vivekananda, for the purpose of teaching the Vedanta. Subsequenly, Vivekananda's translation of first six chapters of ''The Imitation of Christ'' was published in ''Brahmavadin'' (1889).

Vivekananda left for India on 16 December 1896 from England with his disciples, Captain and Mrs. Sevier, and J.J. Goodwin. On the way they visited France, Italy, seeing Leonardo da Vinci's ''The Last Supper'', and set sail for India from the Port of Naples on December 30, 1896. Later, he was followed to India by Miss Müller and Sister Nivedita. Sister Nivedita devoted the rest of her life to the education of Indian women and the cause of India's independence.

Back in India (1897-1899)

Colombo to Almora

Vivekananda arrived in Colombo on January 15, 1897 and received an ecstatic welcome. Here, he gave his first public speech in East, ''India, the Holy Land''. From there on, his journey to Calcutta was a triumphal progress. He traveled from Colombo to Pamban, Rameshwaram, Ramnad, Madurai, Kumbakonam and Madras delivering lectures. People and Rajas gave him enthusiastic reception. In the procession at Pamban, the Raja of Ramnad personally drew the Swami's carriage. On way to Madras, at several places where the train would not stop, the people squatted on the rails and allowed the train to pass only after hearing the Swami. From Madras, he continued his journey to Calcutta and continued his lectures up to Almora.While in the West he talked of India's great spiritual heritage, on return to India the refrain of his 'Lectures from Colombo to Almora' was uplift of the masses, eradication of the caste virus, promotion of the study of science, industrialization of the country, removal of poverty, the end of the colonial rule.These lectures have been published as ''Lectures from Colombo to Almora''. These lectures are considered to be of nationalistic fervor and spiritual ideology. His speeches had tremendous influence on the Indian leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi, Bipin Chandra Pal and Balgangadhar Tilak.

Founding of the Ramakrishna Mission

On 1 May 1897 at Calcutta, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission—the organ for social service. The ideals of the Ramakrishna Mission are based on ''Karma Yoga''. Its governing body consists of the trustees of the Ramakrishna Math- the organ to carry out religious works. Due to the close association between the two, both have their headquarters at Belur, near Calcutta. This was the beginning of an organized social and religious movement to help the masses through educational, cultural, medical and relief work.

Two other monasteries were founded by him- one at Mayavati on the Himalayas, near Almora called the ''Advaita Ashrama'' and another at Madras. Two journals were also started, ''Prabuddha Bharata'' in English and ''Udbhodan'' in Bengali. The same year, the famine relief work was started by Swami Akhandananda at Murshidabad district.

Vivekananda had inspired Sir Jamshedji Tata to set up a research and educational institution when they had travelled together from Yokohama to Chicago on the Swami's first visit to the West in 1893. About this time the Swami received a letter from Tata, requesting him to head the Research Institute of Science that Tata had set up. But Vivekananda declined the offer saying that it conflicted with his spiritual interests.

Visit to Punjab

He later visited western Punjab with the mission of establishing harmony between the ''Arya Samaj'' which stood for reinterpreted Hinduism and the ''Sanatanaists'' who stood for orthodox Hinduism. At Rawalpindi, he suggested methods for rooting out antagonism between Arya Samajists and Muslims. His visit to Lahore is memorable for his famous speeches and his inspiring association with Tirtha Ram Goswami, then a brilliant professor of Mathematics, who later graced monasticism as Swami Rama Tirtha and preached ''Vedanta'' in India and America. He also visited other places, including Delhi and Khetri and returned to Calcutta in January 1896. He spent the next few months consolidating the work of the ''Math'' and training the disciples. During this period he composed the famous ''arati'' song, ''Khandana Bhava Bandhana'' during the event of consecration of Ramakrishna's temple at a devotees' house.

Second visit to the West and last years (1899-1902)

Vivekananda once again left for the West in June 1899, amid his declining health. He was accompanied by Sister Nivedita and Swami Turiyananda. He spent a short time in England, and went on to America. During this visit, he founded the Vedanta societies at San Francisco and New York. He also founded "''Shanti Ashrama''" (peace retreat) at California, with the aid of a generous gift from an American devotee. Later he attended the Congress of Religions, in Paris in 1900. The Paris addresses are memorable for the scholarly penetration evinced by Vivekananda related to worship of ''Linga'' and authenticity of the ''Gita''. From Paris he paid short visits to Brittany, Vienna, Istanbul, Athens and Egypt. For the greater part of this period, he was the guest of Jules Bois, the famous thinker. He left Paris on October 24, 1900, and arrived at the Belur Math on December 9, 1900.

Vivekananda spent few of his days at Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati and later at the Belur Math. Henceforth till the end he stayed at Belur Math, guiding the work of Ramakrishna Mission and Math and the work in England and America. Thousands of visitors came to him during these years including The Maharaja of Gwalior and in December 1901, the stalwarts of Indian National Congress including Lokamanya Tilak. In December 1901, he was invited to Japan to participate in the Congress of Religions, however his failing health made it impossible. He undertook pilgrimages to Bodhgaya and Varanasi towards his final days.

His tours, hectic lecturing engagements, private discussions and correspondence had taken their toll on his health. He was suffering from asthma, diabetes and other physical ailments. A few days prior to his demise, he was seen intently studying the almanac. Three days before his death he pointed out the spot for this cremation—the one at which a temple in his memory stands today. He had remarked to several persons that he would not live to be forty.

On the day of his death, he taught ''Shukla-Yajur-Veda'' to some pupils in the morning at Belur Math. He had a walk with Swami Premananda, a brother-disciple, and gave him instructions concerning the future of the Ramakrishna Math.

Vivekananda died at ten minutes past nine P.M. on July 4, 1902 while he was meditating. According to his disciples, this was ''Mahasamadhi''. Afterward, his disciples recorded that they had noticed "a little blood" in the Swami's nostrils, about his mouth and in his eyes. The doctors remarked that it was due to the rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain, but they could not find the real cause of the death. According to his disciples, ''Brahmarandhra'' — the aperture in the crown of the head — must have been pierced when he attained ''Mahasamadhi''. Vivekananda had fulfilled his own prophecy of not living to be forty years old.

Teachings and philosophy

Swami Vivekananda believed that the essence of Hinduism was best expressed in the Vedanta philosophy, based on the interpretation of Adi Shankara. He summarized the Vedanta's teachings as follows,

Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy—by one, or more, or all of these—and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.

So long as even a single dog in my country is without food my whole religion is to feed it and serve it, anything excluding that is nonreligious.

Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.

Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man.

Religion is the manifestation of divinity already in man.

Serving man is serving God.

According to Vivekananda, an important teaching he received from Ramakrishna was that "Jiva is Shiva" (each individual is divinity itself). This became his Mantra, and he coined the concept of ''daridra narayana seva'' - the service of God in and through (poor) human beings. "If there truly is the unity of Brahman underlying all phenomena, then on what basis do we regard ourselves as better or worse, or even as better-off or worse-off, than others?" - This was the question he posed to himself. Ultimately, he concluded that these distinctions fade into nothingness in the light of the oneness that the devotee experiences in Moksha. What arises then is compassion for those "individuals" who remain unaware of this oneness and a determination to help them.

Swami Vivekananda belonged to that branch of Vedanta that held that no one can be truly free until all of us are. Even the desire for personal salvation has to be given up, and only tireless work for the salvation of others is the true mark of the enlightened person. He founded the Ramakrishna Math and Mission on the principle of Atmano Mokshartham Jagat-hitaya cha (आत्मनॊ मोक्षार्थम् जगद्धिताय च) (for one's own salvation and for the welfare of the World).

Vivekananda advised his followers to be holy, unselfish and have shraddha (faith). He encouraged the practice of Brahmacharya (Celibacy). In one of the conversations with his childhood friend Priya Nath Sinha he attributes his physical and mental strengths, and eloquence to the practice of Brahmacharya.

Vivekananda did not advocate the emerging area of parapsychology and astrology (one instance can be found in his speech ''Man the Maker of his Destiny'', ''Complete-Works, Volume 8, Notes of Class Talks and Lectures'') saying that this form of curiosity doesn't help in spiritual progress but actually hinders it.

; Vivekananda and science In his book ''Raja Yoga'', Vivekananda explores traditional views on the supernatural and the belief that the practice of Raja Yoga can confer psychic powers such as 'reading another's thoughts', 'controlling all the forces of nature', become 'almost all-knowing', 'live without breathing', 'control the bodies of others' and levitation. He also explains traditional eastern spiritual concepts like kundalini and spiritual energy centres (chakras).

However, Vivekananda takes a skeptical approach and in the same book states:

He further says in the introduction of the book that one should take up the practice and verify these things for oneself, and that there should not be blind belief.

In his paper read at the World Parliament of Religions, Chicago (1893), Vivekananda also hinted about the final goal of physics:

The great electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla, after listening to Vivekananda's speech on Sankhya Philosophy, was much interested in its cosmogony and its rational theories of the Kalpas (cycles), Prana and Akasha. His notion based on the Vedanta led him to think that matter is a manifestation of energy. After attending a lecture on Vedanta by Vivekananda, Tesla also concluded that modern science can look for the solution of cosmological problems in Sankhya philosophy, and he could prove that mass can be reduced to potential energy mathematically.

Influence

Several leaders of 20th Century India and philosophers have acknowledged Vivekananda's influence. The first governor general of independent India, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, once observed that "Vivekananda saved Hinduism, saved India." According to Subhash Chandra Bose, Vivekananda "is the maker of modern India" and for Mohandas Gandhi, Vivekananda's influence increased his "love for his country a thousandfold." National Youth Day in India is held on his birthday, January 12, to commemorate him. This was a most fitting gesture as much of Swami Vivekananda's writings concerned the Indian youth and how they should strive to uphold their ancient values whilst fully participating in the modern world.

Swami Vivekananda is widely considered to have inspired India's freedom struggle movement. His writings inspired a whole generation of freedom fighters including Subhash Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghose and Bagha Jatin. Vivekananda was the brother of the revolutionary freedom fighter, Bhupendranath Dutta. Subhash Chandra Bose, one of the most prominent figures in Indian independence movement said,

Aurobindo Ghose considered Vivekananda as his spiritual mentor.

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At the Belur Math, Mahatma Gandhi was heard to say that his whole life was an effort to bring into actions the ideas of Vivekananda. He said:,

Many years after Vivekananda's death, Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel Poet Laureate told Romain Rolland, This shows the esteem held by Tagore for the ''Vedanta Kesari''.

The French Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland writes,

Vivekananda inspired Jamshedji Tata to set up Indian Institute of Science, one of India's finest Institutions. Abroad, he had some interactions with Max Müller. Scientist Nikola Tesla was one of those influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda. On November 11, 1995, a section of Michigan Avenue, one of the most prominent streets in Chicago, was formally renamed "Swami Vivekananda Way".

Above all Swami Vivekananda helped restore a sense of pride amongst the Hindus, presenting the ancient teachings of India in their purest form to a Western audience, free from the propaganda spread by British colonial administrators, of Hinduism being a caste-ridden, misogynistic idolatrous faith. Indeed his early foray into the West would set the path for subsequent Indian religious teachers to make their own marks on the world, as well herald the entry of Hindus and their religious traditions into the Western world.

Swami Vivekananda's ideas have had a great influence on the youth of India. In many institutes, students have come together and formed organizations meant for promoting discussion of spiritual ideas and the practice of such high principles. Many of such organizations have adopted his name. One such group also exists at IIT Madras and is popularly known as (Vivekananda Study Circle). Another one exists at IIT Kanpur by the name Vivekananda Samiti. Additionally, Swami Vivekananda's ideas and teachings have carried on globally, being practiced in institutions all over the world.

In 2011, during the anti-corruption Lokpal bill movement, the prominent figure and Gandhian activist Anna Hazare repeatedly mentioned that he was greatly inspired by Swami Vivekananda's thoughts.

Works

Vivekananda left a body of philosophical works (see Vivekananda's complete works). Swami observed that the billions of people on the earth could be classified into four basic types- those who were in constant activity, or the ''worker''; those who were driven by their inner urge to achieve something in life, or the ''lover''; those who tended to analyze the working of their minds, or the ''mystic'' and those who weighed everything with reason, or the ''philosopher''. His books (compiled from lectures given around the world) on the four Yogas (Karma yoga for the worker, Bhakti yoga for the lover, Raja yoga for the mystic , and Gyan yoga for the philosopher) are very influential and still seen as fundamental texts for anyone interested in the Hindu practice of Yoga. His letters are of great literary and spiritual value. He was also considered a very good singer and a poet. By the time of his death, He had composed many songs including his favorite ''Kali the Mother''. He used humor for his teachings and was also an excellent cook. His language is very free flowing. His own Bengali writings stand testimony to the fact that he believed that words - spoken or written - should be for making things easier to understand rather than show off the speaker or writer's knowledge.

See also

Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement

Vivekananda Kendra

Sister Gargi (Marie Louise Burke)

Vivekanandar Illam

Indian National Pledge

Notes

Bibliography

older edition

External links

Swami Vivekananda

Vivekananda's Biography

Complete Works of Vivekananda

Swami Vivekanada's Selected Quotes

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