Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (/frɔɪd/ FROYD,[2] German: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfrɔʏt]; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst,[3] and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.[4]
"Freud" and "Freudian" redirect here. For other uses, see Freudian slip and Freud (disambiguation).
Sigmund Freud
23 September 1939 (aged 83)
University of Vienna (MD, 1881)
- Jacob Freud (father)
- Amalia Nathanson (mother)
Goethe Prize (1930)
Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna.[5][6] Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902.[7] Freud lived and worked in Vienna having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. Following the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.
In founding psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory.[8] His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfilments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis, Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego.[9] Freud postulated the existence of libido, sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt.[9] In his later work, Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.
Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and across the humanities. It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist cause.[10] Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. W. H. Auden's 1940 poetic tribute to Freud describes him as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives".[11]
Ideas[edit]
Early work[edit]
Freud began his study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873.[132] He took almost nine years to finish due to his interest in neurophysiological research, specifically investigation of the sexual anatomy of eels and the physiology of the fish nervous system, and because of his interest in studying philosophy with Franz Brentano. He entered private practice in neurology for financial reasons, receiving his M.D. in 1881 at the age of 25.[133] Amongst his principal concerns in the 1880s was the anatomy of the brain, specifically the medulla oblongata. He intervened in the important debates about aphasia with his monograph of 1891, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, in which he coined the term agnosia and counselled against a too locationist view of the explanation of neurological deficits. Like his contemporary Eugen Bleuler, he emphasized brain function rather than brain structure.
Freud was also an early researcher in the field of cerebral palsy, which was then known as "cerebral paralysis". He published several medical papers on the topic and showed that the disease existed long before other researchers of the period began to study it. He suggested that William John Little, the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during birth being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were a symptom.
The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to Josef Breuer. Freud credited Breuer with opening the way to the discovery of the psychoanalytical method by his treatment of the case of Anna O. In November 1880, Breuer was called in to treat a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman (Bertha Pappenheim) for a persistent cough and hallucinations that he diagnosed as hysterical. He found that while nursing her dying father, she had developed some transitory symptoms, including visual disorders and paralysis and contractures of limbs, which he also diagnosed as hysterical. Breuer began to see his patient almost every day as the symptoms increased and became more persistent, and observed that she entered states of absence. He found that when, with his encouragement, she told fantasy stories in her evening states of absence her condition improved, and most of her symptoms had disappeared by April 1881. Following the death of her father in that month her condition deteriorated. Breuer recorded that some of the symptoms eventually remitted spontaneously and that full recovery was achieved by inducing her to recall events that had precipitated the occurrence of a specific symptom.[134] In the years immediately following Breuer's treatment, Anna O. spent three short periods in sanatoria with the diagnosis "hysteria" with "somatic symptoms",[135] and some authors have challenged Breuer's published account of a cure.[136][137][138] Richard Skues rejects this interpretation, which he sees as stemming from both Freudian and anti-psychoanalytical revisionism — revisionism that regards both Breuer's narrative of the case as unreliable and his treatment of Anna O. as a failure.[139]
In popular culture[edit]
Sigmund Freud is the subject of three major films or TV series, the first of which was 1962's Freud: The Secret Passion starring Montgomery Clift as Freud, directed by John Huston from a revision of a script by an uncredited Jean-Paul Sartre. The film is focused on Freud's early life from 1885 to 1890 and combines multiple case studies of Freud into single ones, and multiple friends of his into single characters.[269]
In 1984, the BBC produced the six-episode mini-series Freud: the Life of a Dream starring David Suchet.[270]
The stage play The Talking Cure and subsequent film A Dangerous Method focus on the conflict between Freud and Carl Jung. Both are written by Christopher Hampton and are partly based on the nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr. Viggo Mortensen plays Freud and Michael Fassbender plays Jung.[271]
More fanciful employments of Freud in fiction are The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer, which centers on an encounter between Freud and the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, with a main part of the plot seeing Freud helping Holmes overcome his cocaine addiction.[272] The 2020 Austrian-German series Freud involves a young Freud solving murder mysteries.[273] The series has been criticized for having Freud be helped by a medium with real paranormal powers, when in reality Freud was quite skeptical of the paranormal.[274][275] Freud also helps to solve a murder case in the 2006 novel The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.[276]
Mark St. Germain's 2009 play Freud's Last Session imagines a meeting between C. S. Lewis, aged 40, and Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out. The play is focused on the two men discussing religion and whether it should be seen as a sign of neurosis.[277] The play is inspired by the 2003 nonfiction book The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand Nicholi which also inspired a four-part PBS series.[278][279]
Freud is employed to more comic effect in the 1983 film Lovesick in which Alec Guinness plays Freud's ghost who gives love advice to a modern psychiatrist played by Dudley Moore.[280] Freud is also presented in a comedic light in the 1989 film, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Portrayed by Rod Loomis, Freud is one of several historical figures recruited by the film's time-traveling lead characters to assist them in passing their high school history class presentation.[281]
