Let's visit biography of Freud starting from his birth, his childhood, his formative years, the first medical phase of his career, and his major contributions to Psychoanalysis.

The birth of Freud

Sigmund Freud known as the father of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg, Moravia, in the Austrian Empire (now known as Příbor, in the Czech Republic) on May 6, 1856. His birth name was "Sigismund" Freud, which changed in 1878 to "Sigmund" Schlomo Freud.

Freud, born into a Hasidic Jewish family, was the son of Jacob Freud and Amalie Nathanson, small wool merchants. The family moved to Leipzig in 1859 and then to Vienna in 1860 when Sigmund Freud was only 1 year old.

They sought to improve their economic situation and also a place where the family could live amidst better social acceptance. His half-brothers moved to Manchester at the time and five more brothers were born after the move, making Freud the first-born of seven siblings.

Freud's formative years

With a brilliant intelligence and an excellent student since childhood, Freud entered the University of Vienna's medical school at the age of 17. From 1876 to 1882, he worked in the physiology laboratory with specialist Ernst Brücke, where he emphasized research on the histology of the nervous system, studying both the brain structures as well as their functions.

Sigmund Freud was already showing a great interest in the study of mental illnesses and their treatments, which eventually led him to specialize in neurology. While working in the laboratory, Freud became involved with the physicians Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, who impacted him in the study of cocaine and, with Josef Breuer which influenced him in the formation of psychoanalysis.

Freud's marriage

In June 1882, the Orthodox Jewess Martha Bernays Freud and Freud became engaged to be married four years later in Hamburg. Upon becoming engaged, the doctor realized that the low salary and few career prospects in research would be a problem for their future marriage.

Financial difficulties soon led him to work at the Vienna General Hospital, which caused him to leave the laboratory. Upon joining the hospital, Freud began his career there as a clinical assistant, until he reached the prestigious position of lecturer in July 1884.

The Neurology Phase

In fact, little is known about Freud's research up to 1894, because he himself destroyed his writings on two occasions: in 1885 and again in 1894.

In 1885, Freud finished his master's degree in neuropathology and decided to travel to France, upon receiving a scholarship, to work at the Saltpêtrière psychiatric hospital with the famous psychiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot who treated hysterical paralysis using hypnosis.

The technique used by Charcot impressed Freud, because there was a real improvement in the patients. Then, by observing the method, Freud concluded that the cause of hysteria was not organic, but psychological. hypnosis not only in hysterical people.

Freud and the beginnings of Psychoanalysis

Back in Vienna, using the knowledge acquired from Charcot, Freud began to attend mostly "neurotic" Jewish women. From 1905, through clinical case studies with Breuer, the first articles on psychoanalysis were published.

The first of these was the text " Studies on Hysteria " (1895), which marked the beginning of his psychoanalytic investigations.

The first and famous case was the patient identified as Anna O. Case This method consisted of the patient making free associations with each symptom, making the symptoms disappear completely.

Freud also believed that the repressed memories, which generated hysteria, had a sexual origin, and this last point, on which Freud and Breuer disagreed, ended up separating the two, who went on to different lines of study.

Freud's years of self-analysis

In his early studies, Sigmund Freud was not taken seriously by the medical community. In October 1896, Freud's father died.

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Read Also: Who was Sigmund Freud?

About Freud's biography, it is important to note the difficult relationship between Freud and his father, who called him weak and a coward. period of self-examination of his own dreams, childhood memories, and the origins of his own neuroses.

Thus was created the theory about the origin of neurosis in all patients, starting from the " Oedipus complex "This theory was the basis of The Interpretation of Dreams, published at the beginning of the 20th century.

It is important to point out that facts such as the death of his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow by overdose of cocaine, used as a drug to treat depression, and the cases of cure by Breuer's method led the scholar of psychoanalysis to abandon the use of cocaine for therapeutic purposes and the hypnosis techniques.

The neurologist began to use dream interpretation and free association as a tool to penetrate the unconscious and from then on, the term "psychoanalysis" came into use to denote the investigation of unconscious processes.

The theories in the context of Freud's biography

In his theories, Freud subdivided human consciousness into the levels conscious, preconscious and unconscious In addition, the levels of consciousness were distributed among the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, the entities that form the human mind.

According to his studies, the human mind possesses primitive wills hidden under the consciousness, which can manifest themselves through dreams, or even lapses or flawed acts. Initially, the books The Interpretation of Dreams and A psychopathology of everyday life were not very well accepted.

However, doctors from various places , such as Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, and Ernest Jones, engaged in the psychoanalytic movement, popularizing it in academia and even among lay people (among educators and theologians), which contributed to the advancement of analysis among non-medical people.

Freud's biography: the period of recognition

However, the process was gradual, going through the first International Congress of Psychoanalysis, which took place in 1908, until in 1909, Freud was invited to give conferences in the United States, which demonstrated the effective acceptance of his theories by the academic environment.

In March 1910, at the Second International Congress of Psychoanalysis, held in Nuremberg, the International Association of Psychoanalysis was founded, with the purpose of broadening studies and disseminating the techniques of psychoanalysis.

With the advent of Nazism, the persecution of Jews directly affected Freud and his family: 4 of his sisters were killed in concentration camps. Freud stayed in Vienna until 1938 Austria was taken over by the Nazis.

After having his possessions confiscated and his library destroyed, the doctor left for England, where he remained a refugee, along with part of his family.

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The Death of Freud

A year after going to England, Freud ended up dying of jaw cancer He is now 83 years old, after having had more than 30 surgeries to remove tumors, including those on his palate, surgeries that began in 1923.

Regarding his death, there are doubts whether it was accelerated by an accidental overdose of morphine or if it was effectively assisted suicide, due to the high degree of suffering caused by the advanced cancer. The body of the father of psychoanalysis was buried on September 23, 1939 at Golders Green crematorium in London, England.

The works and techniques developed by Sigmund Freud Current psychology still suffers the Freudian influence and continues to develop new studies and clinical practices, with new scholars of psychoanalysis, who despite creating new theories, continue to use Freud's intrinsic assumptions as a basis, such as the concepts of unconscious and transference.

This content about biography of Freud was written for the blog of the Psychoanalysis Clinic training course by Ellyane Friend ([email protected]), lawyer, journalist, psychoanalyst, and holistic therapist, with emphasis on fibromyalgia treatment.