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Freud was born in Freiberg, on May 6, 1856, and educated at the University of
Vienna. When he was three years old his family, fleeing from the anti-Semitic
riots then raging in Freiberg, moved to Leipzig. Shortly thereafter, the
family settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life. Although
Freud's ambition from childhood had been a career in law, he decided to become
a medical student shortly before he entered the University of Vienna in 1873.
Inspired by the scientific investigations of the German poet Goethe, Freud was
driven by an intense desire to study natural science and to solve some of the
challenging problems confronting contemporary scientists. In his third year at
the university Freud began research work on the central nervous system in the
physiological laboratory under the direction of the German physician Ernst
Wilhelm von Brücke. Neurological research was so engrossing that Freud
neglected the prescribed courses and as a result remained in medical school
three years longer than was required normally to qualify as a physician. In
1881, after completing a year of compulsory military service, he received his
medical degree. Unwilling to give up his experimental work, however, he
remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiological laboratory.
In 1883, at Brücke's urging, he reluctantly abandoned theoretical research to
gain practical experience.
Freud spent three years at the General Hospital of Vienna, devoting himself
successively to psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous diseases. In 1885,
following his appointment as a lecturer in neuropathology at the University of
Vienna, he left his post at the hospital. Later the same year he was awarded a
government grant enabling him to spend 19 weeks in Paris as a student of the
French neurologist Jean Charcot. Charcot, who was the director of the clinic
at the mental hospital, the Salpêtrière, was then treating nervous disorders
by the use of hypnotic suggestion. Freud's studies under Charcot, which
centered largely on hysteria, influenced him greatly in channeling his
interests to psychopathology. In 1886 Freud established a private practice in
Vienna specializing in nervous disease. He met with violent opposition from
the Viennese medical profession because of his strong support of Charcot's
unorthodox views on hysteria and hypnotherapy. The resentment he incurred was
to delay any acceptance of his subsequent findings on the origin of neurosis.
Freud's first published work, On Aphasia, appeared in 1891; it was a study of
the neurological disorder in which the ability to pronounce words or to name
common objects is lost as a result of organic brain disease. His final work in
neurology, an article, “Infantile Cerebral Paralysis,” was written in 1897 for
an encyclopedia only at the insistence of the editor, since by this time Freud
was occupied largely with psychological rather than physiological explanations
for mental disorders.
His subsequent writings were devoted entirely to that field, which he had
named psychoanalysis in 1896. Freud's new orientation was heralded by his
collaborative work on hysteria with the Viennese physician Josef Breuer. The
work was presented in 1893 in a preliminary paper and two years later in an
expanded form under the title Studies on Hysteria. In this work the symptoms
of hysteria were ascribed to manifestations of undischarged emotional energy
associated with forgotten psychic traumas. The therapeutic procedure involved
the use of a hypnotic state in which the patient was led to recall and reenact
the traumatic experience, thus discharging by catharsis the emotions causing
the symptoms. The publication of this work marked the beginning of
psychoanalytic theory formulated on the basis of clinical observations. During
the period from 1895 to 1900 Freud developed many of the concepts that were
later incorporated into psychoanalytic practice and doctrine. Soon after
publishing the studies on hysteria he abandoned the use of hypnosis as a
cathartic procedure and substituted the investigation of the patient's
spontaneous flow of thoughts, called free association, to reveal the
unconscious mental processes at the root of the neurotic disturbance. In his
clinical observations Freud found evidence for the mental mechanisms of
repression and resistance. He described repression as a device operating
unconsciously to make the memory of painful or threatening events inaccessible
to the conscious mind. Resistance is defined as the unconscious defense
against awareness of repressed experiences in order to avoid the resulting
anxiety. He traced the operation of unconscious processes, using the free
associations of the patient to guide him in the interpretation of dreams and
slips of speech. Dream analysis led to his discoveries of infantile sexuality
and of the so-called Oedipus complex, which constitutes the erotic attachment
of the child for the parent of the opposite sex, together with hostile
feelings toward the other parent. In these years he also developed the theory
of transference, the process by which emotional attitudes, established
originally toward parental figures in childhood, are transferred in later life
to others. The end of this period was marked by the appearance of Freud's most
important work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Here Freud analyzed many
of his own dreams recorded in the 3-year period of his self-analysis, begun in
1897. This work expounds all the fundamental concepts underlying
psychoanalytic technique and doctrine.
In 1902 Freud was appointed a full professor at the University of Vienna.
This honor was granted not in recognition of his contributions but as a result
of the efforts of a highly influential patient. The medical world still
regarded his work with hostility, and his next writings, The Psychopathology
of Everyday Life (1904) and Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory (1905),
only increased this antagonism. As a result Freud continued to work virtually
alone in what he termed “splendid isolation.” By 1906, however, a small number
of pupils and followers had gathered around Freud, including the Austrian
psychiatrist William Stekel and Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychologist Otto
Rank, the American psychiatrist Abraham Brill, and the Swiss psychiatrists
Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung. Other notable associates, who joined the circle
in 1908, were the Hungarian psychiatrist Sándor Ferenczi and the British
psychiatrist Ernest Jones. Increasing recognition of the psychoanalytic
movement made possible the formation in 1910 of a worldwide organization
called the International Psychoanalytic Association. As the movement spread,
gaining new adherents through Europe and the U.S., Freud was troubled by the
dissension that arose among members of his original circle. Most disturbing
were the defections from the group of Adler and Jung, each of whom developed a
different theoretical basis for disagreement with Freud's emphasis on the
sexual origin of neurosis. Freud met these setbacks by developing further his
basic concepts and by elaborating his own views in many publications and
lectures. After the onset of World War I Freud devoted little time to clinical
observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to the
interpretation of religion, mythology, art, and literature. In 1923 he was
stricken with cancer of the jaw, which necessitated constant, painful
treatment in addition to many surgical operations. Despite his physical
suffering he continued his literary activity for the next 16 years, writing
mostly on cultural and philosophical problems.
When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, Freud, a Jew, was persuaded by
friends to escape with his family to England. He died in London on September
23, 1939. Freud created an entirely new approach to the understanding of human
personality by his demonstration of the existence and force of the
unconscious. In addition, he founded a new medical discipline and formulated
basic therapeutic procedures that in modified form are applied widely in the
present-day treatment of neuroses and psychoses. Although never accorded full
recognition during his lifetime, Freud is generally acknowledged as one of the
great creative minds of modern times. Among his other works are Totem and
Taboo (1913), Ego and the Id (1923), New Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis (1933), and Moses and Monotheism (1939).
Biographical Essays |
