Freud's theories, including the concept of the Oedipus complex, have had an enormous influence on art, literature, and social thinking. Freudian language has permeated the language of society, becoming commonplace in our way of thinking and sociological beliefs.
Freud’s Background
Freud was born of Jewish parentage in Freiburg, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), in 1856, the first of seven children.
The family moved in 1860 to Vienna, where discriminating laws against the Jews had been canceled during 1850s and 1860s. Freud studied medicine at the University of Vienna under Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician.
From 1882 to 1886 Freud worked at the General Hospital, and experimented among others with cocaine, also using it himself. He went to Paris in 1885 to study under Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpetrire Hospital. There the hypnotic treatment of women, who suffered from a medical state called ‘hysteria’, led Freud to take an interest in psychiatry. After returning to Vienna Freud married Martha Bernays; they had six children. In 1886 Freud opened his private practice.
The Influence of Breuer
His former tutor, Breuer had with some success treated patients by encouraging them to ‘talk out’ their past under hypnosis. In 1895, Breuer and Freud, coauthored Studies in Hysteria. It was an account of the treatment of ‘Anna O.’, a hysterical patient, whom Freud himself never treated.
The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
In 1902 Freud was appointed Ausserordentlicher Professor, and in 1905 appeared Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. At the suggestion of a disciple, Freud founded in 1902 the Psychological Wednesday Society, later transformed into the Viennna Psychoanalytic Society.
Freud’s Philosophy and Beliefs
Freud's fundamental idea was that all humans are endowed with an unconscious in which potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them, struggle for supremacy. It is often thought that Freud ‘discovered’ the unconscious mind. However, the idea is found in the work of many thinkers and authors from the times of Homer.
By the beginning of the 1920s, Freud's writing had given rise to several associates of psychoanalysis. In his own life he was nearly muted: a series of operations for mouth cancer, beginning in 1923, made him unable to perform in public.
He published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), The Future of an Illusion (1927), and Civilisation and Its Discontents (1929), all dealing with large cultural issues.
The Later Years
After Hitler's seizure of power, psychoanalytic work came to an end in Germany, and Freud's books were burnt in Berlin. His views also were condemned in the USSR . At the request of the league of Nations, Freud collaborated with Albert Einstein in writing ‘Why War?’ (1933) When Nazis invaded Austria, Freud was permitted to move to London after paying a large ransom.
Freud died of throat cancer three weeks after the outbreak of WW II in 1939. His death on September 23, 1939 was eased by euthanasia. Freud asked his physician to give him a lethal dose of morphine. His last book, Moses and Monotheism (1939), was completed in England.
Source:
Jacobs, M. Sigmund Freud (Key Figures in Counselling and Psychotherapy series) Sage Publications; 2003
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