Sigmund Freud : biography
Sigmund Freud was born on the 6th of May in 1856 in a Moravian town Freiberg, Austria-Hungary, in a wool seller’s family. In 1859 his family moved to Leipzig, then to Vienna, where Freid cum laude finished a gymnasium. In 1873 he entered medical department of Vienna University. In spite of the fact that he wasn’t keen on medicine at all, in 1881 he finished studying cum laude.
Freud started doctor’s career in Vienna psychiatric clinic, where it took him several years of general practice to become from an ordinary assistant a professor of psychiatry.
Freud’s earliest works were devoted to brain functions’ localization and other physiological and brain’s anatomical problems. In 1884 he was on of the first scientists who found out cocaine’s analgesic effect, this discovery gave a stimulus to analgesic doctrine’s development.
Since 1890-s under the influence of French psychiatric school Sigmund began to work on the neurosis problems. In his works he marked out two sources of neurosis: a conflict between the unconscious and consciousness.
In 1895 Freud discovered a method of free association. Freud suggested his patients that they should answer his questions without thinking over. This method allowed patients to remember forgotten events that had happened long time ago and emotionally come through them again. As a person was conscious he could overcome his emotions. Freud called this process psychoanalysis.
From 1900 to 1905 Sigmund published two works, which became very popular: “The Interpretation of dreams” and “Three essays on the theory of sexuality”. In the latter work he put forward a theory that was a reason of his colleagues and general public’s rejection.
In 1921 London University announced about the beginning of a cycle of lectures about five great scientists in different scientific fields: Einstein, Moses Maimonides, Spinoza, Philo and Freud. Freud claimed that university did him a lot of honour by comparing him with Einstein.
In thirty years Freud made a lot of important and detailed observations while working with his patients. Finally in 1920 he published the fist work of the series “Beyond the pleasure principle”, after which a great series of booklets “Continuation of lectures on psychoanalysis introduction”, published in 1933, followed. In this work he reconsidered his early views on instincts’ external demonstration such as love, hatred, guilt, sorrow, envy.
In 1933 when fascists came to power Austria was annexed to Germany, but the famous scientist didn’t leave Vienna in spite of the fact that he ran risks to get in Auschwitz. But Benito Mussolini personally asked Hitler to allow Freud to leave. Freud left Vienna and spent the rest of his life in England.
The founder of psychoanalysis died on the 23d of September in 1939 in Hampstead, a town near London. His works made a great influence on the further development of psychoanalysis, his name has almost become a common noun.
