Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud, by Max Halberstadt, 1921
Born	Sigismund Schlomo Freud (1856-05-06)6 May 1856 Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), Austrian Empire
Died	23 September 1939(1939-09-23) (aged 83) London, England, UK
Residence	Austria
Nationality	Austrian
Fields	Neurology Psychotherapy Psychoanalysis
Institutions	University of Vienna
Alma mater	University of Vienna
Known for	Psychoanalysis
Influences	Aristotle, Brentano, Breuer, Charcot, Darwin, Dostoyevsky, Goethe, Haeckel, Hartmann, Jackson, Jacobsen, Kant, Mayer, Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Sophocles
Influenced	Eugen Bleuler, John Bowlby, Viktor Frankl, Anna Freud, Erich Fromm, Otto Gross, Karen Horney, Arthur Janov, Ernest Jones, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, Fritz Perls, Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich
Notable awards	Goethe Prize Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London)[1]
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Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Most of psychoanalysis forms around the use of a sofa for the patient where the psychologist is behind the patient.
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development Unconscious · Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and super-ego Libido · Drive Transference Countertransference Ego defenses · Resistance Projection · Denial
Important figures Alfred Adler · Michael Balint Wilfred Bion · Josef Breuer Nancy Chodorow · Erik Erikson Ronald Fairbairn · Sándor Ferenczi Anna Freud · Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm · Harry Guntrip Karen Horney · Ernest Jones Carl Jung · Melanie Klein Heinz Kohut · Jacques Lacan Ronald Laing · Margaret Mahler Otto Rank · Wilhelm Reich Harry Stack Sullivan Susan Sutherland Isaacs Donald Winnicott
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams The Psychopathology of Everyday Life Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Schools of thought Self psychology · Lacanian Jungian · Object relations Interpersonal · Relational Ego psychology
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Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud's family and ancestry were Jewish. Freud always considered himself a Jew even though he rejected Judaism and had a critical view of religion.^[2] Freud's parents were poor, but ensured his education. Freud was an outstanding pupil in high school, and graduated the Matura with honors in 1873. Interested in philosophy as a student, Freud later turned away from it and became a neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, Aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy.

Freud went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach. Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered the transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer. He was also a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the interpretation and critique of culture.

Freud's theories have been criticized as pseudo-scientific^[3] and sexist,^[4] and they have been marginalized within psychology departments, although they remain influential within the humanities.^[5] Critics have debated whether it is possible to test Freudian theories.^[6] Some researchers claim evidence exists for some of Freud's theories.^[7] Freud has been called one of the three masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche,^[8] while his ideas have been compared to those of Plato^[9] and Aquinas.^[10]

Early life[link]

Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Příbor (German: Freiberg in Mähren), Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic.^[11] His father, Jacob Freud (1815–1896),^[12] 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.^[13] 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.^[14] Freud was raised by the traditions and beliefs of a Jewish religion; although his attitude towards his religion was "critically negative," he always considered himself a Jew.^[2]

Despite their poverty, Freud's parents ensured his 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. Freud loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek.^[15] Freud read William Shakespeare in English throughout his life; Harold Bloom suggests that Freud's "vision of human psychology is derived, not altogether unconsciously, from his reading of the plays."^[16] Freud went to the University of Vienna aged 17. He had planned to study law, but instead joined the medical faculty at the University of Vienna where his studies included philosophy under Franz Brentano, physiology under Ernst Brücke and zoology under Darwinist Professor Karl Claus.^[17] In 1876 Freud spent four weeks at Claus’s zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs.

Freud graduated from the University of Vienna with an MD in 1881, and the following year began his medical career in Theodor Meynert’s psychiatric clinic at the Vienna General Hospital.

Freud resigned his hospital post in 1886 and set up in private practice specialising in "nervous disorders". The same year he married Martha Bernays the granddaughter of Isaac Bernays, a Chief Rabbi in Hamburg. The couple had six children: Mathilde, born 1887; Jean-Martin, born 1889; Oliver, born 1891; Ernst, born 1892; Sophie, born 1893; and Anna, born 1895.

Carl Jung initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved in to the Freud household at 19 Berggasse in 1896 after the death of her fiance.^[18] The publication in 2006 of a Swiss hotel log, dated 13 August 1898, has been regarded by some Freud scholars as showing that there was a factual basis to these rumors. Peter Gay, previously skeptical of the suggestion that Freud had an affair with Bernays, revised his view of the matter and concluded that an affair between them was "very possible".^[19] Hans Eysenck suggests that the affair occurred, resulting in an aborted pregnancy for Miss Bernays.^[20]

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 warnings from colleague Wilhelm Fliess, and to the detriment of his health, Freud remained a smoker, eventually suffering a buccal cancer.^[21] Freud suggested to Fliess in 1897 that addictions, including that to tobacco, are substitutes for masturbation, "the one great habit".^[22]

Freud greatly admired his philosophy tutor Brentano, who was known for his theories of perception and introspection, as well as Theodor Lipps, who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy.^[23] Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Although Brentano himself rejected the unconscious, due to his definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness, his discussion of it probably helped introduce Freud to the concept.^[10]

Freud read Friedrich Nietzsche as a student and analogies between his work and that of Nietzsche were pointed out almost as soon as he developed a following.^[24] In 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death, Freud bought his collected works; Freud told his friend Fliess that he hoped to find in Nietzsche's works "the words for much that remains mute in me”, though he later added that he had not yet opened them.^[25] Gay writes that Freud came to treat Nietzsche's writings "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied". Freud’s interest in philosophy declined after he had decided on a career in neurology and psychology.^[26]

Development of psychoanalysis[link]

Charcot demonstrates hypnosis on a "hysterical" patient, "Blanche" (Marie Wittman). Charcot questioned his own work on hysteria towards the end of his life.^[27]

In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis. He was later to recall 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.^[28] Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience.

Once he had set up in private practice in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work. He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods he had studied in that it did not use suggestion. The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud’s clinical practice. Described as Anna O she was invited to talk about her symptoms whilst under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase “talking cure” for her treatment). In the course of talking in this way these symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of early traumatic incidents in her life. This led Freud to eventually establish in the course of his clinical practice that a more consistent and effective pattern of symptom relief could be achieved, without recourse to hypnosis, by getting patients to talk freely about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. In addition to this procedure, which he called “free association”, Freud found that patient’s dreams could be fruitfully analysed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which underlay symptom formation. By 1896 Freud had abandoned hypnosis and was using the term “psychoanalysis” to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based.^[29]

Approach to Freud's consulting rooms at Berggasse

On the basis of his early clinical work Freud postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for the psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as Freud's seduction theory.^[30][31] By 1897, however, Freud had abandoned this theory, now arguing that the repressed sexual thoughts and fantasies of early childhood were the key causative factors in neuroses, whether or not derived from real events in the child’s history. This would lead to the emergence of Freud's new theory of infantile sexuality, and eventually to the Oedipus complex.^[32]

Freud’s development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced several medical problems, including depression and heart irregularities, which became a particularly acute after the death of his father in 1896. Suspecting them to be psychosomatic in origin and disturbed by a superstitious belief that he would die at the age of 51,^[33] Freud began exploring his own dreams and childhood memories. During this self-analysis, he became aware of the hostility he felt towards his father and also became convinced that he had developed sexual feelings towards his mother in infancy ("between two and two and a half years"), citing a memory of seeing her naked on a train journey.^[34] 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.^[35]

After the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in November 1899,^[36] 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 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.^[37]

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.^[38]

Jacques Lacan attempted to attract Freud's attention by sending him his thesis. Freud replied to Lacan by sending him a postcard in January 1933; it read, "Thank you for sending your thesis." Élisabeth Roudinesco comments that Freud, "hadn't even deigned to open the manuscript that the young stranger had commended to him, no doubt with great ardor."^[39]

Early followers[link]

Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi

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.^[40] 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,^[41] a small group of followers formed around him, meeting at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon, to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology.^[42] This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (Psychologischen Mittwoch-Gesellschaft) and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement.^[43]

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.^[44] The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians^[45] and all five were Jewish by birth.^[46] 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.^[47] In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud's work,^[40] had opened an out-patient psychotherapy institute of which he was the director in Bauernmarkt, in Vienna.^[42] 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.^[48] Kahane broke with Freud and left the Wednesday Psychological Society in 1907 for unknown reasons and in 1923 he committed suicide.^[49] Reitler was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in Dorotheergasse which had been founded in 1901.^[42] He died prematurely in 1917.^[50] 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.^[50]

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,^[51] 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.^[50]

Carl Jung

By 1906 the group had grown to sixteen members, including Otto Rank, who was employed as the group's paid secretary.^[52] Also in that year Freud began correspondence with Jung who was then an assistant to Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zurich.^[53] In March 1907 Jung and Ludwig Binswanger, also a Swiss psychiatrist, 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.^[54] In 1911 the first women members were admitted to the Society. Tatiana Rosenthal and Sabina Spielrein were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of the Zurich University medical school. Prior to the completion of her studies Spielrein had been a patient of Jung at the Burghölzli and the clinical and personal details of their relationship became the subject of an extensive correspondence between Freud and Jung. Both women would go on to make important contributions to the work of Russian Psychoanalytic Society which was founded in 1910.^[55]

Freud’s early followers met together formally for the first time at the Hotel Bristol, Salzburg on 27 April 1908. This meeting, which was retrospectively deemed to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress,^[56] was convened at the suggestion of Ernest Jones, then a London based neurologist who had discovered Freud’s writings and begun applying psychoanalytic methods in his clinical work. Jones had met Jung at a conference the previous year and they met up again in Zurich to organize the Congress. There were, as Jones records, “forty-two present, half of whom were or became practicing analysts”.^[57] As well as Jones and the Viennese and Zurich contingents accompanying Freud and Jung, also present and notable for their subsequent importance in the psychoanalytic movement were Abraham and Max Eitingon from Berlin, Sándor Ferenczi from Budapest and the New York based Abraham Brill.

Important decisions were taken at the Congress with a view to advancing the impact of Freud’s work. A journal, the Jahrbuch fur psychoanlytische und psychopathologishe Forschungen, was launched in 1909 under the editorship of Jung. This was followed in 1910 by the monthly Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse edited by Adler and Stekel, in 1911 by Imago, a journal devoted to the application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural and literary studies edited by Rank and in 1913 by The Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, also edited by Rank.^[58]

Plans for an International Association of psychoanalysts were put in place and these were implemented at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 where Jung was elected, with Freud’s support, as its first President.

Freud turned to Brill and Jones to further his ambition to spread the psychoanalytic cause in the English-speaking world. Both were invited to Vienna following the Salzburg Congress and a division of labour was agreed with Brill given the translation rights for Freud’s works, and Jones, who was to take up a post at Toronto University later in the year, tasked with establishing a platform for Freudian ideas in North American academic and medical life.^[59] Jones’s advocacy prepared the way for Freud’s visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at the invitation of Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis.^[60] (When the George Washington ocean liner arrived in New York, Freud is rumored to have remarked to Jung, "They don't realize that we are bringing them the plague."^[61]) The event, at which Freud was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, marked the first public recognition of Freud’s work and attracted widespread media interest. Freud's audience included the distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist James Jackson Putnam, Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System at Harvard, who invited Freud to his country retreat where they held extensive discussions over a period of four days. Putnam’s subsequent public endorsement of Freud’s work represented a significant breakthrough for the psychoanalytic cause in the United States.^[60] When Putnam and Jones organised the founding of the American Psychoanalytic Association in May 1911 they were elected President and Secretary respectively.

Brill founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society the same year. His translations of Freud’s work began to appear from 1909.

Some of Freud's followers subsequently withdrew from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and founded their own schools.

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, the then 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 organization with nine other members who had also resigned from the group.^[62] 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 a psychological position he devised called individual psychology.^[63]

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.^[64]

The Committee 1922: Rank, Abraham, Eitingon, Jones (standing), Freud, Ferenczi, Sachs