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Sigmund Freud

(1856-1939)

Who Was Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who developed psychoanalysis, a method through which an analyst unpacks unconscious conflicts based on the free associations, dreams and fantasies of the patient. His theories on child sexuality, libido and the ego, among other topics, were some of the most influential academic concepts of the 20th century.

Early Life, Education and Career

Freud was born in the Austrian town of Freiberg, now known as the Czech Republic, on May 6, 1856. When he was four years old, Freud’s family moved to Vienna, the town where he would live and work for most of the remainder of his life. He received his medical degree in 1881. As a medical student and young researcher, Freud’s research focused on neurobiology, exploring the biology of brains and nervous tissue of humans and animals.

After graduation, Freud promptly set up a private practice and began treating various psychological disorders. Considering himself first and foremost a scientist, rather than a doctor, he endeavored to understand the journey of human knowledge and experience.

Early in his career, Freud became greatly influenced by the work of his friend and Viennese colleague, Josef Breuer, who had discovered that when he encouraged a hysterical patient to talk uninhibitedly about the earliest occurrences of the symptoms, the symptoms sometimes gradually abated.

After much work together, Breuer ended the relationship, feeling that Freud placed too much emphasis on the sexual origins of a patient's neuroses and was completely unwilling to consider other viewpoints. Meanwhile, Freud continued to refine his own argument.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory, inspired by his colleague Josef Breuer, posited that neuroses had their origins in deeply traumatic experiences that had occurred in the patient's past. He believed that the original occurrences had been forgotten and hidden from consciousness. His treatment was to empower his patients to recall the experience and bring it to consciousness, and in doing so, confront it both intellectually and emotionally. He believed one could then discharge it and rid oneself of the neurotic symptoms. Some of Freud’s most discussed theories included:

• Id, ego and superego: These are the three essential parts of the human personality. The id is the primitive, impulsive and irrational unconscious that operates solely on the outcome of pleasure or pain and is responsible for instincts to sex and aggression. The ego is the “I” people perceive that evaluates the outside physical and social world and makes plans accordingly. And the superego is the moral voice and conscience that guides the ego; violating it results in feelings of guilt and anxiety. Freud believed the superego was mostly formed within the first five years of life based on the moral standards of a person’s parents; it continued to be influenced into adolescence by other role models.
• Psychic energy: Freud postulated that the id was the basic source of psychic energy or the force that drives all mental processes. In particular, he believed that libido, or sexual urges, was a psychic energy that drives all human actions; the libido was countered by Thanatos, the death instinct that drives destructive behavior.
• Oedipus complex: Between the ages of three and five, Freud suggested that as a normal part of the development process all kids are sexually attracted to the parent of the opposite sex and in competition with the parent of the same sex. The theory is named after the Greek legend of Oedipus, who killed his father so he could marry his mother.
• Dream analysis: In his book The Interpretation of Dreams , Freud believed that people dreamed for a reason: to cope with problems the mind is struggling with subconsciously and can’t deal with consciously. Dreams were fueled by a person’s wishes. Freud believed that by analyzing our dreams and memories, we can understand them, which can subconsciously influence our current behavior and feelings.

The great reverence that was later given to Freud's theories was not in evidence for some years. Most of his contemporaries felt that his emphasis on sexuality was either scandalous or overplayed. In 1909, he was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States; it was only after the ensuing publication of his book Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916) that his fame grew exponentially.

Freud has published a number of important works on psychoanalysis. Some of the most influential include:

'Studies in Hysteria' (1895)

Freud and Breuer published their theories and findings in this book, which discussed their theories that by confronting trauma from a patient’s past, a psychoanalyst can help a patient rid him or herself of neuroses.

'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1900)

In 1900, after a serious period of self-analysis, Freud published what has become his most important and defining work, which posits that dream analysis can give insight into the workings of the unconscious mind. The book was and remains controversial, producing such topics as the Oedipus complex. Many psychologists say this work gave birth to modern scientific thinking about the mind and the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

'The Psychopathology of Everyday Life' (1901)

This book gave birth to the so-called “Freudian slip” — the psychological meaning behind the misuse of words in everyday writing and speech and the forgetting of names and words. These slips, he explained through a series of examples, revealed our inner desires, anxieties and fantasies.

'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' (1905)

While no one person will die without sex, the whole of humanity would without it — so sex drives human instincts, Freud believed. In this work, he explores sexual development and the relationship between sex and social behavior without applying his controversial Oedipal complex.

Wife and Kids

In 1882, Freud became engaged to marry Martha Bernays. The couple had six children — the youngest of whom, Anna Freud, went on to become a distinguished psychoanalyst herself.

Freud fled Austria to escape the Nazis in 1938 and died in England on September 23, 1939, at age 83 by suicide. He had requested a lethal dose of morphine from his doctor, following a long and painful battle with oral cancer.

Watch "Sigmund Freud: Analysis of a Mind" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Sigmund Freud
• Birth Year: 1856
• Birth date: May 6, 1856
• Birth City: Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist best known for developing the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis.
• Writing and Publishing
• World War II
• Education and Academia
• Science and Medicine
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• University of Vienna
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Freud's book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams,' is said to have given birth to modern scientific thinking about the mind and the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
• Death Year: 1939
• Death date: September 23, 1939
• Death City: London
• Death Country: England

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Sigmund Freud Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/sigmund-freud
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 3, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
• Where id is, there shall ego be.
• Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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Sigmund Freud

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After graduating (1873) from secondary school in Vienna, Sigmund Freud entered the medical school of the University of Vienna , concentrating on physiology and neurology ; he obtained a medical degree in 1881. He trained (1882–85) as a clinical assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna and studied (1885–86) in Paris under neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot .

Sigmund Freud died of a lethal dose of morphine administered at his request by his friend and physician Max Schur. Freud had been suffering agonizing pain caused by an inoperable cancerous tumour in his eye socket and cheek. The cancer had begun as a lesion in his mouth that he discovered in 1923.

What did Sigmund Freud write?

Sigmund Freud’s voluminous writings included The Interpretation of Dreams (1899/1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904), Totem and Taboo (1913), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).

Freud is famous for inventing and developing the technique of psychoanalysis ; for articulating the psychoanalytic theory of motivation, mental illness , and the structure of the subconscious ; and for influencing scientific and popular conceptions of human nature by positing that both normal and abnormal thought and behaviour are guided by irrational and largely hidden forces.

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Sigmund Freud (born May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia , Austrian Empire [now Příbor, Czech Republic]—died September 23, 1939, London , England) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis .

(Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.)

Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms , attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, “psychological man” replaced such earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century’s dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power of Freud’s vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.

Freud’s father, Jakob, was a Jewish wool merchant who had been married once before he wed the boy’s mother, Amalie Nathansohn. The father, 40 years old at Freud’s birth , seems to have been a relatively remote and authoritarian figure, while his mother appears to have been more nurturant and emotionally available. Although Freud had two older half-brothers, his strongest if also most ambivalent attachment seems to have been to a nephew, John, one year his senior, who provided the model of intimate friend and hated rival that Freud reproduced often at later stages of his life.

In 1859 the Freud family was compelled for economic reasons to move to Leipzig and then a year after to Vienna , where Freud remained until the Nazi annexation of Austria 78 years later. Despite Freud’s dislike of the imperial city , in part because of its citizens’ frequent anti-Semitism , psychoanalysis reflected in significant ways the cultural and political context out of which it emerged. For example, Freud’s sensitivity to the vulnerability of paternal authority within the psyche may well have been stimulated by the decline in power suffered by his father’s generation, often liberal rationalists, in the Habsburg empire. So too his interest in the theme of the seduction of daughters was rooted in complicated ways in the context of Viennese attitudes toward female sexuality .

In 1873 Freud was graduated from the Sperl Gymnasium and, apparently inspired by a public reading of an essay by Goethe on nature, turned to medicine as a career. At the University of Vienna he worked with one of the leading physiologists of his day, Ernst von Brücke , an exponent of the materialist, antivitalist science of Hermann von Helmholtz . In 1882 he entered the General Hospital in Vienna as a clinical assistant to train with the psychiatrist Theodor Meynert and the professor of internal medicine Hermann Nothnagel. In 1885 Freud was appointed lecturer in neuropathology, having concluded important research on the brain ’s medulla . At this time he also developed an interest in the pharmaceutical benefits of cocaine , which he pursued for several years. Although some beneficial results were found in eye surgery, which have been credited to Freud’s friend Carl Koller , the general outcome was disastrous. Not only did Freud’s advocacy lead to a mortal addiction in another close friend, Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, but it also tarnished his medical reputation for a time. Whether or not one interprets this episode in terms that call into question Freud’s prudence as a scientist, it was of a piece with his lifelong willingness to attempt bold solutions to relieve human suffering.

Freud’s scientific training remained of cardinal importance in his work, or at least in his own conception of it. In such writings as his “Entwurf einer Psychologie” (written 1895, published 1950; “Project for a Scientific Psychology”) he affirmed his intention to find a physiological and materialist basis for his theories of the psyche. Here a mechanistic neurophysiological model vied with a more organismic, phylogenetic one in ways that demonstrate Freud’s complicated debt to the science of his day.

In late 1885 Freud left Vienna to continue his studies of neuropathology at the Salpêtrière clinic in Paris, where he worked under the guidance of Jean-Martin Charcot . His 19 weeks in the French capital proved a turning point in his career, for Charcot’s work with patients classified as “ hysterics ” introduced Freud to the possibility that psychological disorders might have their source in the mind rather than the brain. Charcot’s demonstration of a link between hysterical symptoms, such as paralysis of a limb, and hypnotic suggestion implied the power of mental states rather than nerves in the etiology of disease . Although Freud was soon to abandon his faith in hypnosis , he returned to Vienna in February 1886 with the seed of his revolutionary psychological method implanted.

Several months after his return Freud married Martha Bernays, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family whose ancestors included a chief rabbi of Hamburg and Heinrich Heine . She was to bear six children, one of whom, Anna Freud , was to become a distinguished psychoanalyst in her own right. Although the glowing picture of their marriage painted by Ernest Jones in his study The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–57) has been nuanced by later scholars, it is clear that Martha Bernays Freud was a deeply sustaining presence during her husband’s tumultuous career.

Shortly after getting married Freud began his closest friendship, with the Berlin physician Wilhelm Fliess, whose role in the development of psychoanalysis has occasioned widespread debate. Throughout the 15 years of their intimacy Fliess provided Freud an invaluable interlocutor for his most daring ideas. Freud’s belief in human bisexuality , his idea of erotogenic zones on the body, and perhaps even his imputation of sexuality to infants may well have been stimulated by their friendship.

A somewhat less controversial influence arose from the partnership Freud began with the physician Josef Breuer after his return from Paris. Freud turned to a clinical practice in neuropsychology , and the office he established at Berggasse 19 was to remain his consulting room for almost half a century. Before their collaboration began, during the early 1880s, Breuer had treated a patient named Bertha Pappenheim —or “Anna O.,” as she became known in the literature—who was suffering from a variety of hysterical symptoms. Rather than using hypnotic suggestion, as had Charcot, Breuer allowed her to lapse into a state resembling autohypnosis, in which she would talk about the initial manifestations of her symptoms. To Breuer’s surprise, the very act of verbalization seemed to provide some relief from their hold over her (although later scholarship has cast doubt on its permanence). “The talking cure” or “chimney sweeping,” as Breuer and Anna O., respectively, called it, seemed to act cathartically to produce an abreaction, or discharge, of the pent-up emotional blockage at the root of the pathological behaviour.

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Influential Books by Sigmund Freud

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Sigmund Freud is one of the most famous figures of the twentieth century. His often controversial ideas had a major impact on the growing field of psychology, and his influence continues to be felt today. In addition to his overarching theories of human psychology, he was also a prolific writer, publishing more than 320 different books, articles, and essays.

The following list represents a selection of the most famous and influential Sigmund Freud books. If you are interested in learning more about Freud and his theories, consider reading a few of his original writings to get a better grasp of Freudian theory directly from the original source.

There are many textbooks that summarize his ideas, but sometimes nothing beats consulting the original writings to gain greater insights and perspectives on his many ideas. 

Studies on Hysteria (1895)

"Studies on Hysteria," or Studien über Hysterie , was co-authored by Freud and his colleague Josef Breuer. The book described their work and study of a number of individuals suffering from hysteria , including one of their most famous cases, a young woman known as Anna O.

"Studies on Hysteria" is one of the most significant Sigmund Freud books because it introduced the use of psychoanalysis as a treatment for mental illness.

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

"The Interpretation of Dreams" was originally published in German under the title Die Traumdeutung . Freud often identified this book as his personal favorite, and it has gone on to become a perennial classic in the history of psychology.

The book lays out Freud's theory that dreams represent unconscious wishes disguised by symbolism. This book is a must-read if you want to learn more about Freud's approach to dreams and the unconscious mind.

"The Interpretation of Dreams" is considered a classic among Sigmund Freud's books because it served as a foundational text for his theories of psychoanalysis. It laid out many of his ideas on the unconscious, dream interpretation, and the meaning of latent and manifest dream content .

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)

"The Psychopathology of Everyday Life," or Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens , is considered one of the major texts that outline Freud's psychoanalytic theory.

The book takes a closer look at many deviations that occur during everyday life, including forgetting names, slips of the tongue (aka Freudian slips ), and errors in speech and concealed memories. He then analyzes the underlying psychopathology that he believed led to such errors.

If you are looking for a Sigmund Freud book that demonstrates his approach to applying his theories to real life, "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" is a must-read.

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)

"Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," or Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie , is considered one of Freud's most important works. In these essays, he outlines his theory of psychosexual development and introduces other concepts including the Oedipus complex , penis envy, and castration anxiety.

While modern ideas of human sexuality have evolved beyond Freud's theories, reading this Sigmund Freud book can be a great way to learn more about early psychoanalytic thought and better grasp how attitudes about sexuality have changed in the subsequent years.

Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)

In "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious," or Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten , Freud observed how jokes, much like dreams, could be related to unconscious wishes, desires, or memories.

Freud's theory of humor is based on his theory of the id, ego, and superego . According to Freud, the superego allows the ego to generate and express humor.

Freud also suggested that cultivating a sense of humor could play a role in unlocking repressions. However, he also felt that certain types of humor, including self-directed irony and sarcasm, could be potentially harmful.

This book can be an excellent primer on understanding how aspects of Freudian theory can be applied to psychoanalytic thought.

Totem and Taboo (1913)

"Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics," or Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker , is a collection of four essays that apply psychoanalysis to other fields including religion, anthropology, and archaeology.

"Totem and Taboo" takes an interdisciplinary look at psychoanalysis. It can be a helpful read if you want to learn more about the influence of Freudian theories on other disciplines.

On Narcissism ( 1914)

In On Narcissism , or Zur Einführung des Narzißmus , Freud outlines his theory of narcissism . In the book, he suggests that narcissism is actually a normal part of the human psyche. He referred to this as primary narcissism or the energy that lies behind each person's survival instincts.

"On Narcissism" marks a significant shift in Freud's ideas, focusing more on libidinal energy directed toward the self rather than toward objects. It also marks an exploration in to the origins of narcissism as a personality disorder.

Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1917)

As one of Freud's most famous books, "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" (or Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse ), Freud outlines his theory of psychoanalysis including the unconscious mind, the idea of neuroses, and dreams.

The preface, written by G. Stanley Hall , explains, "These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do."

"Introduction to Psychoanalysis" is a good overall primer on Freud's approach to psychoanalysis.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

In "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," originally published in German as Jenseits des Lustprinzips , Freud explored his theory of instincts in greater depth. Previously, Freud's work identified the libido as the force behind human actions. In this book, he developed a theory of drives motivated by life and death instincts .

In addition to presenting his ideas on life and death instincts, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" introduced Freud's concept of repetition compulsion . This phenomenon involves people unconsciously repeating traumatic experiences, behaviors, and relationships.

The Future of an Illusion (1927)

In "The Future of an Illusion," originally published as Die Zukunft einer Illusion , Freud explores religion through a psychoanalytic lens.

He describes his own ideas about the origins and development of religion, and suggests that religion is an illusion made up of "...certain dogmas, assertions about facts and conditions of external and internal reality which tell one something that one has not oneself discovered, and which claim that one should give them credence."

"The Future of an Illusion" presents Freud's ideas about religion and how it is informed by psychoanalytic processes.

Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

"Civilization and Its Discontents," or Das Unbehagen in der Kultur , is one of Freud's best known as most widely read books. The book centers on Freud's ideas about the tension between the individual and civilization.

According to Freud, many of our basic desires are at odds with what is best for society, which is why laws prohibiting certain actions are created. The result, he argues, is an ongoing feeling of discontentment among the citizens of that civilization.

This Sigmund Freud book is significant because it explores the inherent tension between individual human desires and the demands of society. The book presents a look at Freud's ideas about how individual's navigate these tensions in order to live in organized societies.

Moses and Monotheism (1939)

In "Moses and Monotheism," first published in 1937 as Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion , Freud utilizes his psychoanalytic theory to develop hypotheses about events of the past. In this book, he suggests that Moses was not Jewish but was instead an ancient Egyptian monotheist.

This was Freud's final work and perhaps one of his most controversial.

Despite the criticism of Freud's speculative take on history, the book can spark questions about the psychological origins of monotheistic religion.

A Word From Verywell

Freud may not be as dominant of an influence as he was in the past, but being familiar with his work and theories is important if you want to understand psychology's history. College textbooks often supply only a cursory overview of some of his best-known ideas.

If you are interested in taking a closer look at Freud's work, exploring some of his many books can provide a great deal of insight into the ideas that fueled the rise of psychoanalysis.

Dallas Baptist University. Freud. Bibliography (full) .

Halberstadt-Freud HC. Studies on hysteria one hundred years on: a century of psychoanalysis .  Int J Psychoanal . 1996;77 ( Pt 5):983-996.

Greenberg R, Pearlman CA. The interpretation of dreams a classic revisited . Psychoanalytic Dialogues . 1999;9(6):749-765. doi:10.1080/10481889909539359

Holmes J.  The Psychopathology of Everyday Life , Sigmund Freud - reflection .  Br J Psychiatry . 2017;211(2):87. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.117.199281

Swaminath G. ' Joke's A Part': In defence of humour .  Indian J Psychiatry . 2006;48(3):177-180. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.31581

Grossman WI. Freud's presentation of 'the psychoanalytic mode of thought' in Totem and taboo and his technical papers .  Int J Psychoanal . 1998;79 ( Pt 3):469-486.

Levine HB. The compulsion to repeat: An introduction .  Int J Psychoanal . 2020;101(6):1162-1171. doi:10.1080/00207578.2020.1815541

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Sigmund Freud: Life, Work & Theories

Though his ideas were controversial, Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential scientists in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. It has been over 100 years since Freud published his theories, yet he still influences what we think about personality and the mind.  

Freud was born to a wool merchant and his second wife, Jakob and Amalie, in Freiberg, Moravia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on May 6, 1856. This town is now known as Příbor and is located in the Czech Republic. 

For most of his life, he was raised in Vienna, and he was married there in 1886 to Martha Bernays. They had six children. His daughter, Anna Freud, also became a distinguished psychoanalyst.

In 1909, Freud came to the United States and made a presentation of his theories at Clark University in Massachusetts. This was his first presentation outside of Vienna. By this point, he was very famous, even with laymen. 

In 1923, at age 67, Freud was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw after many years of smoking cigars. His treatment included 30 operations over the next 16 years, according to the PBS program, " A Science Odyssey ."

Freud lived his adult life in Vienna until it was occupied by Germany in 1938. Though Jewish, Freud's fame saved him, for the most part. The Nazi party burned his books throughout Germany, but they let him leave Austria after briefly confiscating his passport. He and his wife fled to England, where he died in September 1939.

In 1873, Freud entered the University of Vienna medical school. In 1882, he became a clinical assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna and trained with psychiatrist Theodor Meynert and Hermann Nothnagel, a professor of internal medicine. By 1885, Freud had completed important research on the brain's medulla and was appointed lecturer in neuropathology, according to the  Encyclopedia Britannica .  

Freud's friend, Josef Breuer, a physician and physiologist, had a large impact on the course of Freud's career. Breuer told his friend about using hypnosis to cure a patient, Bertha Pappenheim (referred to as Anna O.), of what was then called hysteria. Breuer would hypnotize her, and she was able to talk about things she could not remember in a conscious state. Her symptoms were relieved afterwards. This became known as the "talking cure." Freud then traveled to Paris to study further under Jean-Martin Charcot, a neurologist famous for using hypnosis to treat hysteria.

After this new line of study, Freud returned to his hometown in 1886 and opened a practice that specialized in nervous and brain disorders. He found that hypnosis didn't work as well as he had hoped. He instead developed a new way to get people to talk freely. He would have patients lie back on a couch so that they were comfortable and then he would tell them to talk about whatever popped into their head. Freud would write down whatever the person would say, and analyze what they had said. This method of treatment is called free association. He published his findings with Breuer in 1895, in a paper called  Studien über Hysterie (Studies in Hysteria) .

In 1896, Freud coined the term psychoanalysis. This is the treatment of mental disorders, emphasizing on the unconscious mental processes. It is also called "depth psychology."

Freud also developed what he thought of as the three agencies of the human personality, called the id, ego and superego. The id is the primitive instincts, such as sex and aggression. The ego is the "self" part of the personality that interacts with the world in which the person lives. The superego is the part of the personality that is ethical and creates the moral standards for the ego.

In 1900, Freud broke ground in psychology by publishing his book " The Interpretation of Dreams ." In his book, Freud named the mind's energy libido and said that the libido needed to be discharged to ensure pleasure and prevent pain. If it wasn't released physically, the mind's energy would be discharged through dreams.

The book explained Freud's belief that dreams were simply wish fulfillment and that the analysis of dreams could lead to treatment for neurosis. He concluded that there were two parts to a dream. The "manifest content" was the obvious sight and sounds in the dream and the "latent content" was the dream's hidden meaning. 

"The Interpretation of Dreams" took two years to write. He only made $209 from the book, and it took eight years to sell 600 copies, according to  PBS .

In 1901, he published " The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ," which gave life to the saying "Freudian slip." Freud theorized that forgetfulness or slips of the tongue are not accidental. They are caused by the "dynamic unconscious" and reveal something meaningful about the person. 

In 1902, Freud became a professor at the University of Vienna. Soon, he gained followers and formed what was called the Psychoanalytic Society. Groups like this one formed in other cities, as well. Other famous psychologists, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, were early followers of Freud. 

In 1905, one of Feud's most controversial theories, those about sexual drive, was published as " Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie  (Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory)." He theorized that sexual drive is a large factor in determining a person's psychology, even in infants, an idea he had touched upon in earlier works. He also developed the theory of the "Oedipus complex." This theory states that boys have sexual attractions toward their mothers that can create jealousy toward the father. 

Another of Freud's controversial sexual theories was talked about in his 1933 lecture titled "Femininity." The theory, which he called " penis envy ," stated that females become envious of penises as children, and this envy manifests as a daughter's love for her father and the desire to give birth to a son, because those are as close as she would ever get to having a penis of her own. 

Freud is often joked about for his propensity to assign everything with sexual meaning. A likely apocryphal story is that, when someone suggested that the cigars he smoked were phallic symbols, Freud reportedly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Some have called this " Freud’s ultimate anti-Freudian joke ." However, there is no written record that this quote actually came from Freud, according to Alan C. Elms in a paper published in 2001 in the Annual of Psychoanalysis.

There has been much arguing in psychology and psychiatry circles about Freud's theories during his life and since his death, which may just prove his ideas, according to some. "Freud discovered and taught about the unconscious mind and psychological defenses, including denial and repression," said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who studied under Anna Freud at her London clinic and practices Freudian psychoanalytic therapy. "So, in fact, in trying to deny Freud's insights, people are actually affirming them."

Additional resources

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Ego
• Encyclopedia Britannica: Id
• Discovery Magazine: The Second Coming of Sigmund Freud
• Bio: Sigmund Freud Biography Video

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Biography Online

Sigmund Freud biography

Freud was born 6 May 1856  in Freiberg in Moravia, Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic) to Hasidic Jewish parents.

Freud was brought up in Leipzig and Vienna, where he attended a prominent school. Freud proved an outstanding student, excelling in languages, and English literature. He developed a love for reading Shakespeare in original English, something he kept up throughout his life.

At the age of 17, Freud joined the medical facility at the University of Vienna to study a range of subjects, such as philosophy, physiology and zoology.

Freud graduated in 1881 and began working at the Vienna General Hospital. He worked in various departments, such as the psychiatric clinic and also combined medical practice with research work – such as an influential paper on aphasia (1891) and the effects of cocaine (1894). Freud was initially an advocate of using cocaine for pain relief, though he later stopped advocating its use – as its dangers became increasingly known. Freud was also an early researcher in the field of cerebral palsy.

While working in different medical fields, Freud continued his own independent reading. He was influenced by Charles Darwin’s relatively new theory of evolution. He also read extensively Friedrich Nietzsche ’s philosophy. Other influences on Freud included works on the existence of the subconscious, by writers such as Brentano and Theodor Lipps. Freud also studied the practice of hypnosis, as developed by Jean-Martin Charcot.

In 1886, Freud left his hospital post and set up his own private clinic specialising in nervous disorders. An important aspect of Freud’s approach was to encourage patients to share their innermost thoughts and feelings, which often lied buried in their subconscious. Initially, he used the process of hypnosis, but later found he could just ask people to talk about their experiences.

Freud hoped that by bringing the unconscious thoughts and feelings to the surface, patients would be able to let go of repetitive negative emotions and feelings. Another technique he pioneered was ‘transference’ where patients would project negative feelings of other people on to the psychoanalyst. Freud himself wrote about the personal cost of delving into the darker aspects of the subconscious

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

Freud – Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)

Freud also placed an important stress on getting his patients to write down their dreams and use this in the analysis. Increasingly he used the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to explain his methods.

In developing his outlook on psychoanalysis, he also made significant use of his own dreams, depression and feelings from childhood. To Freud, his relationship with his mother was of particular importance – as a child Freud felt he was competing for his mother’s affections between his siblings.

Oedipus Complex

Another key element of Freud’s work was the importance of early sexual experiences of children. He developed a theory of the Oedipus Complex that children have an unconscious and repressed desire to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex. Freud felt that the successful resolution of this resolution was important for developing a mature identity and sexuality.

In 1899, he published ‘ The Interpretation of Dreams ’ in which, he criticised existing theory of dreams, placing greater emphasis on dreams as unfulfilled wish-fulfilments. He later applied his theories in a more practical setting, which generated a larger readership among the general public. Important works include The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901),  Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , published in 1905.

Group Photo 1909. Freud centre front

From the early 1900s, Freud’s new theories became increasingly influential – attracting a range of followers, who were interested in the new theory of psychology. Other important members of this group included Wilhelm Stekel – a physician, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler. All five members were Jewish . The group discussed new papers, but it was Freud who was considered the intellectual leader of the burgeoning psychoanalysis movement. By 1908, this group had become larger and was formalised as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

In 1909 and 1910, Freud’s ideas were increasingly being spread to the English speaking work. With Carl Jung, Freud visited New York in 1909. In an apocryphal remark – Freud is rumoured to have remarked to Jung on arriving in New York “They don’t realize that we are bringing them the plague.”

The trip was a success with Freud awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Clark University, Ma. This led to considerable media interest and the later formation of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1911.

However, as the movement grew, there were increasing philosophical splits, with key members taking different approaches. Carl Jung left the movement in 1912, preferring to pursue an ‘analytical psychology’. After the First World War, Adler and Rank both left for different reasons.

Freud 1922 (front left

However, Freud and the field of psychoanalysis continued to grow in prominence. In 1930 Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize for his contributions to German literature and psychology.

After the mid-1920s, Freud also increasingly tried to apply his theories in other fields such as his history, art, literature and anthropology. Freud is often considered to take a pessimistic view of human nature. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud declared:

“I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-men as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation…”

Nazi Persecution

In 1933, the Nazi’s came to power in Germany, and Freud as a Jewish writer was put on the list of prohibited books. Freud wryly remarked:

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”

The Nazi’s often burned his books in public. In 1938, Hitler secured an Anschluss of Germany and Austria which placed all Jewish people in great peril, especially intellectuals. Freud, like many in his position, hoped to ride out the growing anti-semitism and stay in Austria. However, in March 1938, Anna Freud was detained by the Gestapo and he became more aware of how dire the situation was. With the help of Ernest Jones (then president of the IPA), Freud and 17 colleagues were given work permits to emigrate to Britain. However, the process of leaving proved tortuous with the Nazi party seeking to gain ‘exit levies’. Freud needed the help of sympathetic colleagues and friends to hide bank accounts and gain the necessary funds. When leaving Austria, Freud was required to sign a document testifying that he had been well and fairly treated. He did so, with a dry wit, adding in his own hand: “ I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone. ” (1)

Freud finally managed to leave Austria on 4 June by the Orient Express, arriving London, 6 June. (As a footnote, Freud’s four elderly sisters did not manage to escape Austria, and would later die in concentration camps.)

For the remaining years of his life, Freud lived at Hampstead, England, where he continued to see patients and continue his work.

In 1923, Freud had been diagnosed with cancer (a result of his smoking habit). Surgery was partially successful, but by 1939, the cancer of his jaw got progressively worse, putting him in great pain. He died on 23 September 1939.

In 1886, he married Martha Bernays; they had six children. Martha’s sister Minna Bernays also joined the household after her fiance died.

On religion

Although of Jewish ethnicity, Freud rejected conventional monotheistic religion as being an illusion and just a necessary step in mankind’s evolution. However, in Moses and Monotheism , Freud acknowledged that religion had played a role in encouraging investigation into the unknown.

Legacy of Freud

Freud was instrumental in the growth of psychoanalysis. His theories have proved controversial, but have often served as a reference either for those who support Freud or those who take an alternative view.

But, despite the immense influence of Freud, his views are increasingly questioned by people who reject the importance he attached to childhood sexuality. Also, contentious is Freud’s idea that humans are afflicted by a destructive ‘death impulse’.

Others criticise Freud for his lack of scientific enquiry – rather trusting to his own judgement and intuition.

Freud’s worked on many female patients, and many of his case studies involve Viennese women. He famously remarked:

“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?'”

In the 1960s and 70s, the feminist movement was highly critical of Freud’s theory. Simone de Beauvoir criticised psychoanalysis in her book “ The Second Sex ”. In the Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan considered Freud to have a ‘Victorian view’ of women.

However, despite the great controversy surrounding Freud’s theories, many believe him to be one of the most original and influential thinkers, who spawned a range of different approaches to issues of the subconscious, personal relationships and dreams.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography Sigmund Freud”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net ,  23 March 2015. Last updated 15 February 2018.

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Sigmund Freud’s Theories & Contribution to Psychology

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Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

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On This Page:

Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was the founding father of psychoanalysis , a method for treating mental illness and a theory explaining human behavior.

Freud believed that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. For example, anxiety originating from traumatic experiences in a person’s past is hidden from consciousness and may cause problems during adulthood (neuroses).

Thus, when we explain our behavior to ourselves or others (conscious mental activity), we rarely give a true account of our motivation. This is not because we are deliberately lying. While human beings are great deceivers of others; they are even more adept at self-deception.

Freud’s life work was dominated by his attempts to penetrate this often subtle and elaborate camouflage that obscures the hidden structure and processes of personality.

His lexicon has become embedded within the vocabulary of Western society. Words he introduced through his theories are now used by everyday people, such as anal (personality), libido, denial, repression, cathartic, Freudian slip , and neurotic.

Who is Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, in what is now Příbor, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire), is hailed as the father of psychoanalysis. He was the eldest of eight children in a Jewish family.

Freud initially wanted to become a law professional but later developed an interest in medicine. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873, graduating with an MD in 1881. His primary interests included neurology and neuropathology. He was particularly interested in the condition of hysteria and its psychological causes.

In 1885, Freud received a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who used hypnosis to treat women suffering from what was then called “hysteria.” This experience sparked Freud’s interest in the unconscious mind, a theme that would recur throughout his career.

In 1886, Freud returned to Vienna, married Martha Bernays, and set up a private practice to treat nervous disorders. His work during this time led to his revolutionary concepts of the human mind and the development of the psychoanalytic method.

Freud introduced several influential concepts, including the Oedipus complex, dream analysis, and the structural model of the psyche divided into the id, ego, and superego. He published numerous works throughout his career, the most notable being “ The Interpretation of Dreams ” (1900), “ The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ” (1901), and “ Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality ” (1905).

Despite controversy and opposition, Freud continued to develop his theories and expand the field of psychoanalysis. He was deeply affected by the outbreak of World War I and later by the rise of the Nazis in Germany. In 1938, due to the Nazi threat, he emigrated to London with his wife and youngest daughter.

Freud died in London on September 23, 1939, but his influence on psychology, literature, and culture remains profound and pervasive.

He radically changed our understanding of the human mind, emphasizing the power of unconscious processes and pioneering therapeutic techniques that continue to be used today.

Sigmund Freud’s Theories & Contributions

Psychoanalytic Theory : Freud is best known for developing psychoanalysis , a therapeutic technique for treating mental health disorders by exploring unconscious thoughts and feelings.

Unconscious Mind : Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, describing the features of the mind’s structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.

The id, ego, and superego have most commonly been conceptualized as three essential parts of the human personality.

Psychosexual Development : Freud’s controversial theory of psychosexual development suggests that early childhood experiences and stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) shape our adult personality and behavior.

His theory of psychosexual stages of development is predicated by the concept that childhood experiences create the adult personality and that problems in early life would come back to haunt the individual as a mental illness.

Dream Analysis : Freud believed dreams were a window into the unconscious mind and developed methods for analyzing dream content for repressed thoughts and desires.

Dreams represent unfulfilled wishes from the id, trying to break through to the conscious. But because these desires are often unacceptable, they are disguised or censored using such defenses as symbolism.

Freud believed that by undoing the dreamwork , the analyst could study the manifest content (what they dreamt) and interpret the latent content ( what it meant) by understanding the symbols.

Defense Mechanisms : Freud proposed several defense mechanisms , like repression and projection, which the ego employs to handle the tension and conflicts among the id, superego, and the demands of reality.

Sigmund Freud’s Patients

Sigmund Freud’s clinical work with several patients led to major breakthroughs in psychoanalysis and a deeper understanding of the human mind. Here are summaries of some of his most notable cases:

Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim) : Known as the ‘birth of psychoanalysis,’ Anna O . was a patient of Freud’s colleague Josef Breuer. However, her case heavily influenced Freud’s thinking.

She suffered from various symptoms, including hallucinations and paralysis, which Freud interpreted as signs of hysteria caused by repressed traumatic memories. The “talking cure” method with Anna O. would later evolve into Freudian psychoanalysis.

Dora (Ida Bauer) : Dora, a pseudonym Freud used, was a teenager suffering from what he diagnosed as hysteria. Her symptoms included aphonia (loss of voice) and a cough.

Freud suggested her issues were due to suppressed sexual desires, particularly those resulting from a complex series of relationships in her family. The Dora case is famous for the subject’s abrupt termination of therapy, and for the criticisms Freud received regarding his handling of the case.

Little Hans (Herbert Graf) : Little Hans , a five-year-old boy, feared horses. Freud never met Hans but used information from the boy’s father to diagnose him.

He proposed that Little Hans’ horse phobia was symbolic of a deeper fear related to the Oedipus Complex – unconscious feelings of affection for his mother and rivalry with his father. The case of Little Hans is often used as an example of Freud’s theory of the Oedipal Complex in children.

Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer) : Rat Man came to Freud suffering from obsessive thoughts and fears related to rats, a condition known as obsessional neurosis.

Freud connected his symptoms to suppressed guilt and repressed sexual desires. The treatment of Rat Man further expanded Freud’s work on understanding the role of internal conflicts and unconscious processes in mental health disorders.

Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff) : Wolf Man was a wealthy Russian aristocrat who came to Freud with various symptoms, including a recurring dream about wolves.

Freud’s analysis, focusing on childhood memories and dreams, led him to identify the presence of repressed memories and the influence of the Oedipus Complex . Wolf Man’s treatment is often considered one of Freud’s most significant and controversial cases.

In the highly repressive “Victorian” society in which Freud lived and worked, women, in particular, were forced to repress their sexual needs. In many cases, the result was some form of neurotic illness.

Freud sought to understand the nature and variety of these illnesses by retracing the sexual history of his patients. This was not primarily an investigation of sexual experiences as such. Far more important were the patient’s wishes and desires, their experience of love, hate, shame, guilt, and fear – and how they handled these powerful emotions.

Freud’s Followers

Freud attracted many followers, who formed a famous group in 1902 called the “Psychological Wednesday Society.” The group met every Wednesday in Freud’s waiting room.

As the organization grew, Freud established an inner circle of devoted followers, the so-called “Committee” (including Sàndor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones).

At the beginning of 1908, the committee had 22 members and was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Neo-Freudians

The term “neo-Freudians” refers to psychologists who were initially followers of Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) but later developed their own theories, often modifying or challenging Freud’s ideas.

Here are summaries of some of the most notable neo-Freudians:

Carl Jung : Jung (1875 – 1961) was a close associate of Freud but split due to theoretical disagreements. He developed the concept of analytical psychology, emphasizing the collective unconscious, which houses universal symbols or archetypes shared by all human beings. He also introduced the idea of introversion and extraversion.

Alfred Adler : Adler (1870 – 1937) was another early follower of Freud who broke away due to differing views. He developed the school of individual psychology, highlighting the role of feelings of inferiority and the striving for superiority or success in shaping human behavior. He also emphasized the importance of social context and community.

• Otto Rank : Rank (1884 – 1939)  was an early collaborator with Freud and played a significant role in the development of psychoanalysis. He proposed the “trauma of birth” as a critical event influencing the psyche. Later, he shifted focus to the relationship between therapist and client, influencing the development of humanistic therapies.

Karen Horney : Horney (1885 – 1952) challenged Freud’s views on women, arguing against the concept of “penis envy.” She suggested that social and cultural factors significantly influence personality development and mental health. Her concept of ‘basic anxiety’ centered on feelings of helplessness and insecurity in childhood, shaping adult behavior.

• Harry Stack Sullivan : Sullivan (1892 – 1949) developed interpersonal psychoanalysis, emphasizing the role of interpersonal relationships and social experiences in personality development and mental disorders. He proposed the concept of the “self-system” formed through experiences of approval and disapproval during childhood.

Melanie Klein : Klein (1882 – 1960), a prominent psychoanalyst, is considered a neo-Freudian due to her development of object relations theory, which expanded on Freud’s ideas. She emphasized the significance of early childhood experiences and the role of the mother-child relationship in psychological development.

• Anna Freud : Freud’s youngest daughter significantly contributed to psychoanalysis, particularly in child psychology. Anna Freud (1895 – 1982) expanded on her father’s work, emphasizing the importance of ego defenses in managing conflict and preserving mental health.

Wilhelm Reich : Reich (1897 – 1957), once a student of Freud, diverged by focusing on bodily experiences and sexual repression, developing the theory of orgone energy. His emphasis on societal influence and body-oriented therapy made him a significant neo-Freudian figure.

• Erich Fromm : Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-American psychoanalyst associated with the Frankfurt School, who emphasized culture’s role in developing personality. He advocated psychoanalysis as a tool for curing cultural problems and thus reducing mental illness.

Erik Erikson : Erikson (1902 – 1994)  extended Freud’s theory of psychosexual development by adding social and cultural aspects and proposing a lifespan development model. His theory of psychosocial development outlined eight stages, each marked by a specific crisis to resolve, that shape an individual’s identity and relationships.

Critical Evaluation

Does evidence support Freudian psychology? Freud’s theory is good at explaining but not predicting behavior (which is one of the goals of science ).

For this reason, Freud’s theory is unfalsifiable – it can neither be proved true or refuted. For example, the unconscious mind is difficult to test and measure objectively. Overall, Freud’s theory is highly unscientific.

Despite the skepticism of the unconscious mind, cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, such as procedural memory (Tulving, 1972), automatic processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Stroop, 1935), and social psychology has shown the importance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Such empirical findings have demonstrated the role of unconscious processes in human behavior.

However, most evidence for Freud’s theories is from an unrepresentative sample. He mostly studied himself, his patients, and only one child (e.g., Little Hans ).

The main problem here is that the case studies are based on studying one person in detail, and regarding Freud, the individuals in question are most often middle-aged women from Vienna (i.e., his patients).

This makes generalizations to the wider population (e.g., the whole world) difficult. However, Freud thought this unimportant, believing in only a qualitative difference between people.

Freud may also have shown research bias in his interpretations – he may have only paid attention to information that supported his theories, and ignored information and other explanations that did not fit them.

However, Fisher & Greenberg (1996) argue that Freud’s theory should be evaluated in terms of specific hypotheses rather than a whole. They concluded that there is evidence to support Freud’s concepts of oral and anal personalities and some aspects of his ideas on depression and paranoia.

They found little evidence of the Oedipal conflict and no support for Freud’s views on women’s sexuality and how their development differs from men’.

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American psychologist, 54 (7), 462.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Fisher, S., & Greenberg, R. P. (1996). Freud scientifically reappraised: Testing the theories and therapy . John Wiley & Sons.

Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence . SE, 3: 41-61.

Freud, S. (1896). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence . SE, 3: 157-185.

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams . S.E., 4-5.

Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. SE, 6.  London: Hogarth .

Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality.  Se ,  7 , 125-243.

Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious . SE, 14: 159-204.

Freud, S. (1920) . Beyond the pleasure principle . SE, 18: 1-64.

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id . SE, 19: 1-66.

Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard edition , 19, 235-239.

Freud, S. (1961). The resistances to psycho-analysis. In T he Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and other works (pp. 211-224).

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102 (1), 4.

Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of experimental psychology, 18 (6), 643.

Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory , (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press.

What is Freud most famous for?

Why is freud so criticized, what did sigmund freud do.

His conceptualization of the mind’s structure (id, ego, superego), his theories of psychosexual development, and his exploration of defense mechanisms revolutionized our understanding of human psychology.

Despite controversies and criticisms, Freud’s theories have fundamentally shaped the field of psychology and the way we perceive the human mind.

What is the Freudian revolution’s impact on society?

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Sigmund Freud (Psychologist Biography)

A 2002 empirical survey endorsed by the American Psychological Association (APA) ranked Freud as the third most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Who Is Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founding father of psychoanalysis. He believed that childhood experiences can impact adult life and help to shape our personality. Despite proposing a number of controversial theories throughout his career, Freud's influence on the field of psychology is profound. 

Sigmund Freud's Family Background

Sigmund (originally Sigismund) Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in the small Moravian town of Freiberg (now Pribor, Czech Republic). He was the eldest of eight children born to Jewish parents Jakob Freud and Amalia Nathansohn. Freud’s father worked as a wool merchant and had two adult sons from a previous marriage. At the time of Freud’s birth, the family was relatively poor and lived in a single rented room. Due to mounting financial struggles, they left Freiberg in 1859, and eventually settled in Vienna when Freud was four years old.  

Freud was taught to read and write by his mother and displayed superior intellectual ability from an early age. He loved literature and began reading works by Shakespeare when he was eight years old. He had a flair for languages, and learned to speak Latin, Greek, English and French as a child. He also taught himself Spanish and Italian.

Freud had a close, positive relationship with his mother and is said to have been her favorite child. He was given a bedroom for himself so he could focus on his studies, a privilege none of his other siblings received. His mother would often serve him his meals in his room.

Early Schooling

Freud’s first exposure to formal education came in 1865 when he entered a prominent high school at age nine—a year earlier than most of his peers. He was an excellent student and was constantly at the top of his class. He graduated with honors at age 17.

Educational Background

In 1873, Freud enrolled at the University of Vienna to study medicine. He completed his studies and earned his MD in 1881. Between 1882 and 1885, Freud worked in various departments at the Vienna General Hospital, including the Department of Psychiatry. He was appointed as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Vienna in 1885. In that same year, he received a grant to study in Paris under neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who trained him in the use of hypnosis to treat the condition then known as hysteria.

Upon his return to Vienna, Freud began his private practice, specializing in nervous and brain disorders. During the 1890’s, he became dissatisfied with hypnosis as a treatment method for hysteria and began focusing more on an approach he learned previously from respected Viennese physician, Josef Breuer. While Freud was still in medical school, Breuer began treating a young woman pseudonymously called Anna O. for symptoms of hysteria. Breuer found that if he hypnotized the woman and asked her to recall events that occurred around the time a particular symptom first appeared, that symptom would disappear.

Free Association

Freud adapted Breuer’s method by having patients lie on a couch with their eyes closed, and encouraging them to talk freely about the first time they experienced a particular symptom. Unlike Breuer, Freud did not hypnotize his patients but found this method—which he termed free association —to be quite effective. Freud later coined the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to describe his approach to treatment, as well as the theory underlying his approach.

In 1902, Freud and a small group of scholars formed the first organized group of psychoanalysts, which was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (later known as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society). That same year, he was promoted to the rank of full professor at the University of Vienna, a position which he held until 1938.

Freud's Theory of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is both a theory that attempts to explain human behavior and a form of talk therapy. Freud believed that childhood experiences help to shape one’s personality and can impact a person when he or she becomes an adult. The goal of psychoanalysis is to release repressed or pent up memories and emotions so that the individual in treatment can heal. This form of therapy involves bringing events that are in the unconscious or the subconscious to the conscious.

Freud developed psychoanalysis over the course of several years. As the theory evolved, it eventually covered a number of different concepts and mechanisms. To get a better understanding of what is involved in psychoanalysis and how the theory developed, it may be best to start with Freud’s view of the human mind.

Freud’s Model of the Human Mind

One of Freud’s most significant contributions to psychology was his model of the human mind. He believed the mind was divided into three regions:

• The Conscious  - this is the part of the human mind that contains current thoughts and feelings. Anything you are aware of and are focusing on right now is in the conscious part of your mind.
• The Preconscious (also called the Subconscious)  - this region of your mind is home to emotions and experiences that you are not currently aware of, but you can easily retrieve them from memory.
• The Unconscious - this is the largest and deepest level of your mind and it contains all the instinctual desires, primitive wishes, hopes, and memories that are outside of your awareness. According to Freud, the things in your unconscious play a major role in driving your behavior. As mentioned before, psychoanalysis aims to bring unresolved material from your unconscious into your awareness so that you can process them fully and heal.

Freud later suggested that human personality was also divided into three major categories. These are:

• The Id  - this is the most primitive part of your personality and it focuses on satisfying your most basic urges and instincts. The id develops during the early stages of infancy. It resides in your unconscious mind and is the source of libidinal energy. It is composed of two biological drives called eros (this is your instinct to survive) and thanatos (this is your instinct to destroy). Eros helps you to survive by directing processes such as eating, breathing, and sex which are essential for maintaining life. As eros is stronger than thanatos, people tend to have a stronger drive to live than self-destruct. When thanatos is directed outward to other people, it may be interpreted as aggression or violence.
• The Ego  - this part of your personality deals with reality. It ensures that the basic urges and instincts of the id are satisfied in ways that are safe, realistic, and socially acceptable. Freud believed that the ego develops from the id during the later stages of infancy. The ego resides in your conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.
• The Superego -- this part of your personality develops during childhood and focuses on morality and higher principles. It contains all of the standards and morals you have learned from your parents, family members, and wider society. The superego encourages social responsibility. It resides in your conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.

Pleasure Principle

According to Freud, the id, ego, and superego interact to create complex human behavior. How is that possible? Consider the id, which is driven by the pleasure principle and seeks instant gratification for primitive urges such as hunger and thirst. The id is vital for infant survival as it ensures the baby’s needs are met quickly. As only the id is present during the early stages of infancy, the baby will cry until its primitive needs are satisfied. There is simply no point in trying to negotiate a later feeding time with a hungry baby.

As the baby grows older though, he may realize that getting all his needs met immediately may not be realistic or socially acceptable. For example, he may get in trouble if he gets hungry and decides to eat a box of cookies before dinner. Freud claimed that the id tries to resolve this tension by using primary process thinking . This involves forming a mental image of the desired object (in this case it would be cookies or another type of food) which helps to satisfy the primitive need temporarily.

The ego develops from the id during the latter part of infancy and operates on the reality principle. It tries to satisfy the desires of the id in a socially appropriate way. This means the child will weigh the pros and cons of a particular behavior instead of acting impulsively. In this case, a hungry child who is stuck in class may think about pizza (primary process thinking) until he finally gets the opportunity to eat during his lunch break and satisfy his desire in a way that is socially acceptable.

The superego is the last part of personality to develop. Freud claimed that the superego begins to emerge when an individual is about five years old. The superego contains a person’s sense of right and wrong, and it holds all the ideals and moral standards that have been learned over time. It provides the guidelines for making decisions.

The goal of the superego is perfect behavior. As it wants the individual to behave in a civilized manner, it works to restrict the unacceptable desires of the id and tries to make the ego act on standards that are idealistic rather than realistic.

Freud believed that a good balance between id, ego, and superego results in a healthy personality. If someone has an id that is too dominant, he may develop into an adult that is impulsive or uncontrollable. As such a person wants all his desires to be satisfied right away, he may be more likely to engage in criminal activity than the average person. On the other hand, an individual with a dominant superego may be extremely moralistic and judgmental. As a result, this individual may hold himself or other people to standards that are unreachable.

Defense Mechanisms

The term “ defense mechanism ” was first used by Freud in his psychoanalytic theory. According to Freud, the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict with each other because each part of your personality has its own goal. A defense mechanism is a strategy used by the ego to protect against anxiety from unacceptable thoughts and feelings. It is an unconscious response that safeguards the individual from emotions or experiences that are too difficult to manage right now. In some cases, one or more defense mechanisms may prevent unacceptable thoughts and impulses from entering the conscious mind.

Common types of defense mechanisms include:

Repression  - the ego pushes disturbing thoughts out of consciousness and prevents them from coming back into the conscious mind. For example, a person who experienced sexual abuse as a child may have repressed memories of the abuse.

Denial  - overwhelming external events are blocked from awareness so that the individual refuses to believe or is not aware of what is currently happening. For example, people who are addicted to alcohol may refuse to believe that they have a drinking problem.

Rationalization  - the individual explains difficult feelings or unacceptable behavior in a rational or logical manner while avoiding the real reason for the feelings or behavior. For example, a student who fails a test may reason that the instructor did a poor job in teaching the topic.

Displacement  - the individual satisfies an urge or impulse by using a substitute object in a way that is socially inappropriate. For example, a man who is upset with his boss may come home and abuse his partner.

Sublimation  - the individual satisfies an urge or impulse by using a substitute object in a way that is socially acceptable. For example, an athlete who is jeered by the crowd may use his emotions to raise his performance during the game.

Projection  - the ego takes unacceptable thoughts or feelings and ascribes them to other people. For example, you may hate your teacher but you know these feelings are socially inappropriate. So you convince yourself that it is your teacher who hates you.

Regression  - the individual moves backward in psychological development in order to cope with stress. For example, an adult who is stressed out at work may start throwing tantrums like a child.

The 5 Stages of Psychosexual Development

Freud suggested that children develop through five distinct stages of psychosexual development . He believed that children focus on a different body part as a source of pleasure in each stage. This is one of Freud’s most well-known and controversial theories. The five stages he proposed include:

• The Oral Stage  (birth to 18 months) - the child seeks pleasure from the mouth (for example, sucking or feeding)
• The Anal Stage  (18 months to 3 years) - the child seeks pleasure from the anus (for example, expelling or withholding feces)
• The Phallic Stage  (3-6 years) - the child seeks pleasure from the penis or clitoris (for example, masturbation)
• The Latent Stage  (6 years to puberty) - little libidinal energy is present as the child has no sexual motivation
• The Genital Stage (puberty to adulthood) - the child seeks pleasure from the penis or vagina (for example, sexual intercourse).

Oedipal Complex

Freud also proposed that an Oedipal complex occurs during the phallic stage when children are roughly 3-6 years old. He claimed that children in this stage of development have an unconscious desire for their opposite-sex parent and feel jealous of their same-sex parent.

The Oedipal complex manifests as either an Oedipus complex in boys or an Electra complex in girls. According to Freud, a young boy will develop an Oedipus complex, become sexually attracted to his mother and view his father as a rival. As his mother shows affection for his father, the boy fantasizes about getting rid of his father and taking his place. However, the boy also develops a fear that his father will castrate him (castration anxiety) so he begins to identify with his father and adopt his attitudes, behaviors, roles, and values. This eventually results in the father becoming a role model for the boy as the boy develops his superego and learns his roles as a male in society.

Freud claimed that a young girl in the phallic stage will develop an Oedipal complex, become sexually attracted to her father, and treat her mother with hostility. The complex begins when the girl realizes that she does not have a penis and develops “penis envy.” She also blames her mother for her castration. However, fear of losing her mother’s love moves the girl to identify with her mother and adopt her attitudes, behaviors, roles, and values. This leads to the development of the girl’s superego as she learns her roles as a female in society.

Interestingly (and controversially), Freud suggested that the identification of a girl with her mother is less complete than the identification of a boy with his father. As a result, he claimed that the female superego is weaker and less developed than the male superego.

Freud believed that an individual must successfully complete each of the five psychosexual stages in order to develop into a healthy adult. If there is a conflict during any stage that remains unresolved, the individual may become stuck at that stage of development. For example, children who did not successfully complete the oral stage may demonstrate an excessive reliance on oral behaviors such as biting fingernails, eating, or smoking when they become adults.

Dream Analysis and Interpretation

Freud described dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious.” He believed that analyzing a person’s dreams could provide much insight into the thoughts, feelings, and memories that are buried deep within the mind. Freud viewed dreams as a way to see how the unconscious mind functions. He also used dreams to take a peek at what inappropriate thoughts lay outside of a person’s awareness.

Freud believed that the content in dreams could be separated into two categories called manifest content  and latent content . Manifest content refers to all the images, sounds, and events the dreamer remembers once he awakens. Latent content refers to the symbolic meaning or underlying wish that is hidden in the dream.

According to Freudian theory, the main purpose of dreams is to fulfill wishes. Freud believed that dreams change forbidden desires into less threatening forms. This transformation takes place via condensation (joining two or more ideas together), displacement (changing the person or thing we are concerned about into someone or something else), and secondary elaboration (putting all the pieces together to form a coherent narrative).When this is done, the anxiety caused by the forbidden desire is significantly reduced in the dream.

Applications of Psychoanalysis

There are three main applications of psychoanalysis. It is used to:

• Explore the human mind
• Explain human behavior
• Treat psychological or emotional issues during talk therapy

Psychoanalysis helps people in treatment to better understand the unconscious forces that influence their current thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This approach often involves eliciting emotional responses and helping individuals to overcome negative defense mechanisms. Psychoanalysis also teaches coping techniques so that people can address problems that arise in the future rather than fall back on unhealthy defenses. Individuals in therapy develop deep personal insight and learn how to deal with feelings that are difficult to process.

Although fewer therapists currently use psychoanalysis to explore human behavior or diagnose and treat mental health concerns, the approach is still well-known and hotly debated in the field of psychology. Freud’s work also influenced many younger psychologists who would help to develop the field, including Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Alfred Adler, and Anna Freud.

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis

One of the major criticisms of psychoanalysis is that the theory is highly unscientific. While Freud suggested explanations for human behavior, he was unable to predict behavior because his methods were not based on objective measurements. Freud developed the majority of his theories while working with a small sample of people. As a result, his theories may not be applicable to the wider population.

Some people who need mental health counseling may avoid psychoanalysis because it can be a very intense and personal treatment approach. Critics argue that the approach is too time-consuming (treatment may last for years), too costly, and is generally ineffective. Notable researchers such as Karl Popper and Noam Chomsky have repeatedly claimed that psychoanalysis is not based on empirical evidence. Some critics have suggested that Freud may have focused on information that supported his theories and ignored data that did not fit.

Sigmund Freud's Books, Awards, and Accomplishments

Sigmund Freud was a prolific writer and published a number of books on his theories. Some of his most important works include:

• The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1904
• Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 1905
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905
• Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1910
• Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920
• The Ego and the Id, 1923
• Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, 1926
• The Future of an Illusion, 1927
• Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930
• New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1933

Personal Life

In 1886, Freud married Martha Bernays after a four-year engagement and the couple had six children—three boys and three girls. One of their daughters, Anna, later became a famous child psychoanalyst and was instrumental in leading the Freudian movement after her father’s death.

Though Jewish by birth, Freud did not practice Judaism as an adult. He developed an addiction to nicotine at age 24 and smoked roughly 20 cigars a day. He tried several times to quit but was unsuccessful. He was diagnosed with cancer of the palate and jaw at 67 years of age, resulting in a series of over 30 operations. He experienced chronic pain during the last 16 years of his life.

Following Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, Freud fled Vienna, taking his wife and daughter, Anna, with him. The last 16 months of his life were spent in London, where he died on September 23, 1939, at 83 years of age.

American Psychological Association. (2002). Eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug02/eminent

Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An introduction to the history of psychology  (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Rudnytsky, P. L. (2002). Freud, Sigmund. (1856-1939). In E. Erwin (Ed.), The Freud encyclopedia: Theory, therapy, and culture . New York: Routledge.

Sheehy, N. (2004). Fifty key thinkers in psychology . New York: Routledge.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). (n.d.). Retrieved from  https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/freud_sigmund.shtml

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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud was a late 19th and early 20th century neurologist. He is widely acknowledged as the father of modern psychology and the primary developer of the process of psychoanalysis . 

Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia in 1856, the oldest of eight children. His family moved to Vienna when Freud was four years old. He studied at a preparatory school in Leopoldstadt where he excelled in Greek, Latin, history, math, and science. His academic superiority gained him entry into the University of Vienna at the age of seventeen. Upon completion, he went on to pursue his medical degree and PhD in neurology.

Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886, and the couple had six children. The youngest of Freud's children, Anna Freud , became an influential psychologist and ardent defender of her father's theories. 

Professional Life

After working with Joseph Breur at the Vienna General Hospital, Freud traveled to Paris to study hypnosis under Jean-Martin Charcot. When he returned to Vienna the following year, Freud opened his first medical practice and began specializing in brain and nervous disorders. Freud soon determined that hypnosis was an ineffective method to achieve the results he desired, and he began to implement a form of talking therapy with his patients. This method became recognized as a “talking cure” and the goal was to encourage the patient to tap into the unconscious mind and let go of the repressed energy and emotions therein. Freud called this function repression and felt that this action hindered the development of emotional and physical functionality, which he referred to as psychosomatic . The element of using talk therapy eventually became the foundation of psychoanalysis.

Contribution to Psychology

Freud drew heavily upon the emphasis of philosophers such as Nietzsche , Dostoevsky, and Kant. Freud’s theories continue to influence much of modern psychology, and his ideas also resonate throughout philosophy, sociology, and political science, with thinkers such as Jacques Lacan and Karl Marx drawing heavily upon Freudian theories. Freud's emphasis upon early life and the drive to pleasure are perhaps his most significant contributions to psychology. Even contemporary psychologists who disavow Freud's theories often take an interest in a client's early life and the relationship between child and parent. Some of Freud's most significant theories include:

• The development of the unconscious and conscious minds. Freud argued that the mind consists of the conscious mind, which contains the thoughts and beliefs of which we are aware. The unconscious mind, by contrast, is a repository for repressed memories and unexpressed desires, and problems with the unconscious mind can lead to problems with behavior and emotional regulation. 
• The structural model of personality. Drawing upon his theory of the unconscious mind, Freud developed the concepts of the id , ego , and superego . The ego is the everyday personality that we present to the world, but represents only a fraction of a person's true self. The superego, by contrast, serves as a sort of conscience and internalizes moral, social, and cultural norms. The id is a pleasure-seeking, primitive structure that is present at birth. It forms the foundation of a person's personality , and unconscious id desires can explain seemingly unexplainable behaviors. 
• Stages of psychosexual development. These stages, which include the oral, anal, genital, latent, and phallic, represent different stages of child development during which a child has a major psychological task he or she must complete. The primary task of the anal stage, for example, is toilet training. Failure to competently complete a major developmental task can lead to later psychological problems related to that stage. For example, children who have trouble during toilet training may grow into anally retentive adults. One of the most popular and widely debated sub-theories within the stages of psychosexual development is the Oedipal complex . During this developmental challenge, a son is incestuously attracted to his mother and feels rivalry toward his father. He must resolve this challenge by identifying with his father. 
• The concept of defense mechanisms. Freud's defense mechanisms —which are still a part of contemporary psychology—are tools of the unconscious mind that are designed to alter reality in order to avoid pain and suffering. Repression, for example, is the tendency to forget troubling events, while projection is the tendency to project one's own traits onto someone else. Freud's defense mechanisms were further developed and codified by his daughter Anna Freud. 
• Dream interpretation. Freud believed that dreams could be interpreted to glean important information about a person's psychology and personality, and he believed that dreams frequently served as wish-fulfillment devices. 

Freud has played a seminal role in popular culture. Images of a patient lying on a couch, for example, are allusions to Freud. His remark, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” is still sometimes used to indicate that not every action has deep psychological meaning. In addition, Freudian slips occur when a person says what his or her unconscious mind is thinking or desires. For example, a woman might say, “I want my ex-boyfriend dead” when she meant to say, “I want my ex-boyfriend back.”  

Later Life and Legacy

Freud developed cancer in 1923 and passed away sixteen years later. His ideas are still debated today, and his techniques and interpretations are widely accepted as the basis of modern psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud is considered one of the most influential people in the history of psychology.

Books by Sigmund Freud

• Studies on Hysteria (with Josef Breuer, 1895)
• The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
• Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)
• Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva (1907)
• Totem and Taboo (1913)
• On Narcissism (1914)
• Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1917)
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
• The Ego and the Id (1923)
• The Future of an Illusion (1927)
• Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
• Moses and Monotheism (1939)
• An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940)
• The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess (1986)
• The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1999)

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Books by Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud is thought of as founding father of psychoanalysis. Freud’s books have been recommended many times by experts on Five Books.

Freud expert Lisa Appignanesi has recommended books about Sigmund Freud . “Freud is like the weather. He’s everywhere. If you look anywhere in our culture his ideas will appear, even if they’re not named as his ideas. Once you’ve read him, you say to yourself ‘oh that that’s where this has come from,’ even though it may not be publicly stated or cited.”

Civilisation and Its Discontents

By sigmund freud.

Read expert recommendations

“Freud is a very relevant figure to this discussion. The limits of progress are in the flaws and divisions of human nature, which are integral to being human. The way Freud represents this in a number of his works, including Civilisation and Its Discontents , is to say that there are a variety of instincts – a very unpopular term now which may not be scientifically valid – from benevolence and love on the one hand to violence and aggression on the other, which are equally part of the human animal.” Read more...

Critiques of Utopia and Apocalypse

John Gray , Philosopher

Studies in Hysteria

By josef breuer & sigmund freud.

“This was the starting point when people first considered the idea that stress and psychological distress can be ‘converted’ into physical symptoms.” Read more...

The best books on Psychosomatic Illness

Suzanne O'Sullivan , Science Writer

Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

“Humour is a way of allowing for all that we cannot allow ourselves because we are trying so hard to be civilized and good people.” Read more...

The best books on Jewish Humour

Ruth Wisse , Literary Scholar

Mass Psychology and Other Writings

“He writes this paper on group or mass psychology after World War I. It was a time when many writers tried to come to terms with the industrialised mass slaughter and to think about what drove nationalism and militarism in the first place. For Freud, the Great War confirmed some of his own ideas about human destructiveness and repetition. It was viewed as evidence of the power of the irrational. A concern with human destructiveness and aggression and the constant propensity to the repetition of pathology was to be a central feature of his thought in the 1920s and 1930s.” Read more...

The best books on The Psychology of Nazism

Daniel Pick , Historian

The Interpretation of Dreams

“With The Interpretation of Dreams , he invents a special kind of confessional, reflective, meandering narrative genre, through which you can both argue theoretically and also look inward and write about the self and the way the mind works. Through this book you see how the Freudian self takes on layers and layers of significance. He leads us not only into dreams and their occluded meanings, but into memory: for Freud, the most important dreams take you back into childhood. These memories of childhood are woven into fresh understandings of childhood experience and more generally into ideas of how dreams hide meanings and how interpretation can take place.” Read more...

The best books on Sigmund Freud

Lisa Appignanesi , Novelist

Interviews where books by Sigmund Freud were recommended

The best books on sigmund freud , recommended by lisa appignanesi, the interpretation of dreams by sigmund freud, the life and work of sigmund freud by ernest jones, becoming freud: the making of a psychoanalyst by adam phillips, dispatches from the freud wars: psychoanalysis and its passions by john forrester, tribute to freud by h.d..

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, Sigmund Freud spent most of his life in Vienna, until fleeing to London just before his death in 1939. Using his classical education to illustrate his points, he introduced the idea that we have an ‘unconscious’ that plays an important role in our actions. For his sessions when patients talked freely to him about their thoughts in a one-on-one setting, he coined the term ‘psychoanalysis.’ Freud expert Lisa Appignanesi talks us through books that shed light on his life as well as his work.

The best books on The Psychology of Nazism , recommended by Daniel Pick

Mass psychology and other writings by sigmund freud, the mass psychology of fascism by wilhelm reich, love, hate and reparation by melanie klein and joan rivere, the nuremberg interviews by leon goldensohn, eichmann in jerusalem by hannah arendt.

The historian and author of The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, Daniel Pick, tells us what we can learn from attempts to use psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to understand Nazism.

The best books on Jewish Humour , recommended by Ruth Wisse

The big book of jewish humour by william novak and moshe waldoks, tevye the dairyman and the railroad stories by sholem aleichem, herzog by saul bellow, the finkler question by howard jacobson, jokes and their relation to the unconscious by sigmund freud.

Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard and author of No Joke: Making Jewish Humour,  identifies Tevye the Dairyman as the first standup comic and Sigmund Freud as Jewish humour’s greatest analyst.

The best books on Psychosomatic Illness , recommended by Suzanne O'Sullivan

Studies in hysteria by josef breuer & sigmund freud, medical muses: hysteria in nineteenth-century paris by asti hustvedt, the man who mistook his wife for a hat by oliver sacks, into the silent land: travels in neuropsychology by paul broks, the examined life: how we lose and find ourselves by stephen grosz.

We still understand very little about the workings of the brain, and yet we dismiss the tricks it can play on us as undeserving of the same sympathy as physical illness. Neurologist and author Suzanne O’Sullivan recommends the best books on psychosomatic illness.

Critiques of Utopia and Apocalypse , recommended by John Gray

The invisible writing by arthur koestler, civilisation and its discontents by sigmund freud, the pursuit of the millennium by norman cohn, the sense of an ending by frank kermode, hello america by j. g. ballard.

Is it inevitable that the desire to build a perfect world should end in disaster? John Gray considers the flaws in utopian thinking and the essential nature of humans. He recommends the best critiques of utopia and apocalypse.

The best books on Psychoanalysis , recommended by David Bell

Sigmund freud by richard wollheim, envy and gratitude by melanie klein, learning from experience by wilfred bion.

The well-known psychoanalyst explains which books he believes deserve to be the most read on psychoanalysis. His choices include books by Freud, Klein, Bion, Arendt and explanations of why they must be included.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

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Famous Scientists

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist, was an influential thinker of the twentieth century.

Freud’s innovative treatment of human actions, dreams, and indeed of cultural object s as invariably possessing implicit symbolic significance has proven to be extraordinarily productive, and has had immense implications for a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation in addition to psychology.

However, Freud’s most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a new science of the mind, remains the subject of much disapproval and controversy.

Contributions and Achievements:

Freud conceptualized the mind symbolically as an ancient ruin which had to been uncovered much like an archeologist would discover the treasures of an ancient civilization. This gave birth to Psychoanalysis. Freud’s account of the sexual genesis and nature of neuroses led him naturally to develop a clinical treatment for treating such disorders. This has become so influential today that when people speak of ‘psychoanalysis’ they frequently refer exclusively to the clinical treatment. The object of psychoanalytic treatment may be said to be a form of self-understanding, once this is acquired, it is largely up to the patient, in consultation with the analyst to determine how he shall handle this newly-acquired understanding of the unconscious forces which motivate him. Freud became more and more sophisticated in his technique of psychoanalysis, and he became particularly adept at using his patient’s biased impressions of him to help the patient to discover the origins of the unconscious memory which led to the symptoms from which they suffered.

Freud’s theories and research methods have always been controversial. He and psychoanalysis have been criticized in very extreme terms. For an often-quoted example, Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, said in 1975 that psychoanalysis is the “most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century”. However, Freud has had a tremendous impact on psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists follow Freud’s approach to an extent, even if they reject his theories.

The contemporary scientific climate in which Freud lived and worked should be taken into consideration. When the towering scientific figure of nineteenth century science, Charles Darwin, published his revolutionary Origin of Species, Freud was four years old. The evolutionary principle completely altered the existing conception of man, whereas before man had been seen as a being different in nature to the members of the animal kingdom by virtue of his possession of an immortal soul, he was now seen as being part of the natural order, different from non-human animals only in degree of structural difficulty.

This made it possible and reasonable for the first time to treat man as an object of scientific investigation, and to imagine of the vast and varied range of human behavior, and the motivational causes from which it springs, as being amenable in principle to scientific explanation. Much of the creative work done in a whole variety of diverse scientific fields over the next century was to be inspired by and derive nourishment from this new world-view which Freud, with his enormous esteem for science, accepted implicitly.

Freud also followed Plato in his account of the nature of mental health or psychological well-being, which he saw as the establishment of a melodic relationship between the three elements which constitute the mind. A key concept introduced by Freud was that the mind possesses a number of ‘defense mechanisms’ to attempt to prevent conflicts from becoming too acute, such as repression (pushing conflicts back into the unconscious), sublimation (channeling the sexual drives into the achievement socially acceptable goals, in art, science, poetry, etc.), fixation (the failure to progress beyond one of the developmental stages), and regression (a return to the behavior characteristic of one of the stages).

Published works:

Freud’s work is preserved in a 23 volume set called “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”.

Some of Freud’s most interesting works are “The Interpretation of Dreams”, his own favorite, “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life”, about Freudian slips and other day-to-day oddities, “Totem and Taboo”, Freud’s views on our beginnings, “Civilization and Its Discontents”, his pessimistic commentary on modern society, and “The Future of an Illusion”, on religion. All are a part of The Standard Edition, but all are available as separate paperbacks as well. This renowned man died of the cancer of the mouth and jaw that he had been suffering since 20 years of his life.

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Chen-Ning Yang

Ahmed Zewail

Sigmund Freud Biography

Sigmund Freud was the man behind the concept and method of psychoanalysis, which was a means of delving into a person's inner conflicts that lie within the unconscious mind. This method is based on the understanding that people's fantasies and dreams say something about these problems that affect them in their daily lives. Freud also formed several theories that relate to the ego, libido and sexuality of the child, which are only a few of the other topics he studied and specialized on during his lifetime. Hence, Freud was regarded as one of the most influential and controversial personalities of the 20th century.

Sigmund Freud lived most of his years in Vienna, although Freiberg (a town in Austria) was his birthplace. When his family relocated to Vienna, Freud was only four years of age. It was in this city in Austria where he received a degree in the field of medicine, which was in 1881. A year after, he married and decided to practice his profession for a living. His main focus was on treating patients who suffered from psychological disorders, and this started his journey and preoccupation on studying human experience and instincts. He also worked with other scientists and scholars throughout his life, although he eventually formulated his own theories and developed a method for the treatment of psychological conditions among individuals.

Immediately after obtaining a medical degree at the University of Vienna, Sigmund Freud decided to work as a physician. He later expanded his knowledge by studying the works of Jean-Martin Charcot, who was a French neurologist. It was during this time that Freud developed an interest in the treatment of hysteria, which is an emotional disorder. Afterwards, Josef Breuer, one of Freud's mentors, introduced him to one patient's case study. The patient's name was Bertha Pappenheim, although she was simply known as "Anna O.". The patient suffered from various symptoms including paralysis, tactile anesthesia and a nervous cough. The two scientists discovered that Anna suffered from various traumatic experiences, which they believed had a significant contribution to her mental illness. Breuer and Freud encouraged the patient to talk freely about her symptoms and experiences. Since there was no known specific cause for Anna's difficulties, they simply allowed her to express her feelings and thoughts through talking. In 1895, the Studies on Hysteria was published, which was the outcome of their analysis on the improvement on Anna's condition by implementing the so-called "talking cure". Freud explored deeper into the human mind and sexuality, and this allowed him to publish several works including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and The Interpretation of Dreams . Both of these written works by Freud became known worldwide, but his study of the psychosexual stages left a more lasting impact on critics and scholars alike. His theory was also met with much controversy and skepticism, yet this has a massive influence on the field of psychology up to this modern era.

Contributions

Sigmund Freud mainly worked on formulating theories that impact the human mind, mental disorders and sexuality. His works provided a deeper understanding on abnormal and clinical psychology, as well as the stages of human development. Some of his scholarly publications included The Ego and the Id , Moses and Monotheism , Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , Studies on Hysteria, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Civilization and Its Discontents , and The Interpretation of Dreams . He believed that mental disorders were rooted to cultural differences aside from physiological causes, as presented in his case studies. Although Freud initially worked with Breuer, the two parted ways because the latter believed that much of Freud's preoccupations were on the sexual origins of neuroses. They were unable to settle the differences in their viewpoints, and this triggered Freud to go deeper into his study. He also published his work "The Interpretation of Dreams", and he maintained the belief that a person's dreams reveal so much about the inner conflicts within. While he may have refined his theories and gained popularity with his publications, his contemporaries agreed on the assumption that Freud was more focused on sexuality as one of the topics of his studies. Nevertheless, Freud's fame increased worldwide as he received numerous invitations to deliver lectures in various parts of the United States, beginning 1909.

Sigmund Freud admitted that he had gone through conflicts within himself, which started during his early years. His father's death had an impact on him, and he went through feelings of guilt and shame, as well. He recalled how he viewed his father as his rival to the love and affection of his mother, which caused him to develop negative emotions. He reflected on this experience he had as a child and used it as one of his basis and inspiration in developing the theory on infantile sexuality and the concept of Oedipus Complex. There were several theories that Freud established, which are still recognized even up to this day. He also inspired several scholars and scientists during his time. For instance, Charles Darwin's theory on the evolution of man had some fascinating links to the study of Freud on human behavior. Then, there was this scientific theory by Helmholtz, which referred to energy and its constant quality in any physical system. This was related to Freud's analysis of the structural components of the human mind. Thus, the theories and scientific works of Freud may have been criticized and praised at the same time by his contemporaries, yet these are evidences of his strong influence in the field of psychology. Sigmund Freud battled with a serious illness during the last years of his life. He developed oral cancer, which caused him to struggle physically and emotionally. In 1939, while he was living in exile in England, he requested from his doctor a lethal dose of the drug morphine to end his sufferings. This resulted to the death of this controversial and influential scientist whose works remain with us until this very day.

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The Freud We Wish For

By Joshua Rothman

“ Becoming Freud ,” by the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, is short for a biography—less than two hundred pages—and it contains no startling revelations. But, in its own way, it’s an audacious book. It’s a revisionist history of Freud and his enterprise; its implicit goal, never stated but always clear, is to help us salvage the best parts of Freud’s work while leaving behind the rest—the outmoded theories and unwieldy jargon that make Freud a caricature rather than an intriguing thinker. (Whether that’s a worthy goal is an open question.)

Phillips is probably today’s most famous psychoanalyst, and a quietly controversial figure. For seven years, he was the principal child psychologist at Charing Cross Hospital, in London. (He’s now in private practice.) Famously, he spends most of the week with his analysands and writes only on Wednesdays; somehow, on that schedule, he’s produced eighteen books. Phillips is obviously brilliant—John Banville has called him “an Emerson of our time”—and yet it’s never quite clear how seriously you should take his writing. Like Emerson, he seems to regard much of it as exploratory or performative. (“When I write something and it sounds good, I leave it in, even if there’s doubt about it,” he has said , because he’s curious to see what readers will think.) He’s the editor of Penguin’s new series of Freud translations, even though he doesn’t speak German; last year, reviewing one of his books for this magazine, Joan Acocella wrote that “Phillips loves Freud. He cites him again and again. But his Freud sometimes doesn’t look much like the Freud we thought we knew. He looks more like Adam Phillips.” How much that bothers you depends on how seriously you take Freud. There are some people who would rather have Phillips.

It’s especially easy for the Freud of “Becoming Freud” to look like Phillips, because, in the book, the facts of Freud’s life are largely absent. “One of the first casualties of psychoanalysis, once the facts of our lives are seen as complicated in the Freudian way, is the traditional biography,” Phillips writes. Phillips doesn’t trust in the ability of a conventional “life story,” with its procession of names, dates, and places, to tell us what anyone, least of all Freud, was really about. Anyway, he thinks, the most important story about Freud’s life is psychoanalysis— that’s the story Freud himself chose to tell the rest of us about our lives and his. And because, as Freud knew, “whatever story we are telling, we are always also telling the story of our own wanting … at any moment in Freud’s life we can ask, encouraged and legitimated by his own work, what is Freud wanting from psychoanalysis? What is the pleasure he seeks? What is he doing it for and what is it doing to him? What about himself is he seeking to sustain and enjoy, and what would he prefer to ignore?” By starting with the flower, in short, you might get an idea of the root.

Phillips sees psychoanalysis as the invention of a deeply ambivalent person. As a Viennese Jew, Freud coveted respectability but enjoyed being an outsider. As a father, he identified with the unfiltered lawlessness of his children—if only he could want, and demand, so freely! As a striver, he valued ambition above all (“If you put wishing at the heart of human development, you make extravagant ambition your theme,” Phillips writes); at the same time, he empathized with people who lose everything. (He was drawn to the question of “what has to be lost for the individual to survive … whether the individual can survive his losses, and at what cost?”)

Freud was a scientist with an artistic temperament; he became a doctor who envied his patients, a “double agent” who suffered from “what psychoanalysts would eventually call a split identification.” Phillips writes that, as a young man, in the eighteen-eighties, watching Jean-Martin Charcot work with his hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière, Freud “identified with the hysterics as the discarded, the thwarted, and the misunderstood, people with baffled desires and stalled ambition; people who, not unlike Jews, made others inordinately suspicious,” while, at the same time, “he identified with Charcot as a man he would like to become … the educated, cultured doctor who took hysterics seriously and engaged with their confounding and confounded predicament.” Freud’s genius, Phillips thinks, lay in the way he valued his own ambivalent feelings. He didn’t see them as a contradiction to resolve; instead, he proposed a new kind of person, the psychoanalyst, “who has to be both on the side of the patient’s safety and security, and on the side of her disruptive desires.”

If there’s a big idea in “Becoming Freud,” it’s that psychoanalysis is about communication—about what Phillips calls “sociability”—more than it’s about a cure. It’s a way of helping people speak for themselves (or of helping them figure out how they are already speaking). There’s a sense in which, for Phillips, Freud’s work was a kind of rebellion—against medicine, against society, against one’s own false sense of orderliness. (Freud sought “to account for—something starkly pertinent for the Jews of Freud’s generation—what one makes of what one is forced by.”) But Freud’s rebellion differed from that of the modernist artists he was surrounded by. It was more like the subtle, ambivalent rebellion of the translator or the critic. Freud’s discovery, Phillips writes, was

just how ingenious and disturbing modern people had become as the unconscious artists of their own lives. It was their capacities for representation—for finding ways and means for making their desires known in however disguised or self-defeating forms; as dreams, or slips, or perverse and neurotic symptoms—that had impressed Freud … His patients, Freud realized, were working on and at their psychic survival, but like artists not like scientists; and their material was their personal history encoded in their sexuality. They were not empiricists, or only fleetingly; they were fantasists. Their adaptations were ingeniously imaginative, however painful; but they were stuck. Their symptoms were the equivalent of writer’s block, or rather, speaker’s block. Indeed, Freud was becoming their new kind of good listener, and their champion; someone who could get, who could make something of, their strange ways of speaking. Someone who, like a good parent, or a good art critic, could appreciate what they were up to, what they could make, and make a case for it.

Phillips writes with such aphoristic assurance that this conclusion seems obvious. Actually, it’s a very particular interpretation of Freud. Phillips leaves out Freud the scientist, who aimed to discover laws about the self; Freud the clinician, who aimed to cure; and (for the most part) Freud the provocateur and kook. Perhaps because “Becoming Freud” began as a series of lectures at Cambridge , he rarely quotes from Freud’s books, which makes it easy to forget their bizarre, slightly unhinged specificity.

And yet my own sense is that Phillips is right. He’s put his finger on the best part of Freud’s thinking. In fact, in Phillips’s view, the story of psychoanalysis has a tragic end. He thinks Freud was a victim of his own success. In the beginning, like a good critic, Freud let his patients own their mysteries. But, as psychoanalysis became an institution unto itself and developed its own rules and dogmas, analysts began to talk over their patients. “Once Freud had discovered what he called the unconscious it was never clear how unconscious the unconscious would be allowed to be (at least by the owners of psychoanalysis). What would it be to be an expert or a specialist of the unconscious?” Phillips writes. “Do psychoanalysts know what people are talking about or just know how to let people speak for themselves?” An enterprise that was characterized, at first, by uncertainty became too certain. Although Phillips discusses Freud’s later books throughout “Becoming Freud”—books like “Civilization and Its Discontents” and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”—the narration itself stops, rather abruptly, when Freud is fifty. That, he seems to say, is when the psychoanalytic enterprise began to grow claustrophobic and controlling. It’s as though Phillips has to look away.

I suppose it says something about our era that the Freud we want is Freud the translator, rather than Freud the doctor—the conversational, empathetic, curious Freud, rather than the incisive, perverse, and confident one. (Perhaps, in a period when we are communicating more than ever, the difficulties of communication are growing more obvious.) And I can’t help feeling that there’s something a little irresponsible about writing a “biography” of Freud that is, in its way, so partial and polemical. Still, as Phillips writes: “Our vision, Freud showed us, what we are able to see, is sponsored by our blind spots; what we are determined not to know frees us and forces us to know something else.” Phillips doesn’t give us the whole Freud, but, if Freud is to be believed, you can never see the whole person anyway. We see what we need to see.

Photograph by Ferdinand Schmutzer/Agency Anzenberger/Austrian National Library.

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10 Things You May Not Know About Sigmund Freud

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: September 23, 2014

1. Freud’s death may have been physician-assisted suicide.

By the summer of 1939, Freud was frail and suffering intense pain from terminal, inoperable mouth cancer. On September 21, 1939, Freud grasped the hand of his friend and doctor, Max Schur, and reminded him of his earlier pledge not to “torment me unnecessarily.” He added, “Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense.” After receiving the permission of Freud’s daughter, Anna, Schur injected the first of three heavy morphine doses. Freud slipped into a coma and never awoke.

2. His chain smoking led to more than 30 cancer surgeries.

Freud became addicted to tobacco after lighting up his first cigarettes in his twenties. His daily constitutionals always included stopovers at a local tobacco store, and after graduating to cigars, he often smoked more than 20 of them a day. In spite of the warnings from doctors about his chain smoking, Freud believed the habit enhanced his productivity and creativity. After the discovery of a cancerous tumor inside Freud’s mouth in 1923, doctors removed a large part of his jaw. Although he underwent 33 additional surgeries over the next 16 years and had a large prosthesis inserted to separate his sinus and jaw, Freud never quit smoking.

3. Freud once thought cocaine was a miracle drug.

In the 1880s, Freud grew interested in a little-known, legal drug being used by a German military doctor to rejuvenate exhausted troops—cocaine. Freud experimented with the drug and found his digestion and spirits improved after drinking water laced with dissolved cocaine. He distributed doses to his friends and future wife and touted the drug’s therapeutic benefits in an 1884 paper “On Coca,” which he called ”a song of praise to this magical substance.” However, when Freud gave cocaine to close friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to wean him from his morphine addiction and relieve chronic pain, his friend instead developed a cocaine addiction. With news of other addictions and overdose deaths spreading, Freud stopped advocating cocaine’s medical benefits but continued to use the drug intermittently for migraines, nasal inflammation and depression until the mid-1890s.

4. He turned down $100,000 from a Hollywood mogul.

By 1925, Freud’s fame had spread so widely that movie producer Samuel Goldwyn offered the Viennese psychoanalyst, whom he called the “greatest love specialist in the world,” $100,000 to write or consult on a film script about “the great love stories of history.” In spite of the eye-popping offer, Freud turned it down as he did a $25,000 offer the year before from the publisher of the Chicago Tribune to psychoanalyze the famed criminals Leopold and Loeb as they awaited their sensational murder trial.

5. “The Interpretation of Dreams” was initially a commercial failure.

The book Freud considered his “most significant work” produced little fanfare when it was published in 1899. Only 351 copies of “The Interpretation of Dreams” were sold in its first six years, and a second edition was not published until 1909.

6. His famous couch was a gift from a grateful patient.

Freud employed hypnotism when he opened his medical practice in Vienna in 1886, and he found it easier to put patients into trances if they were lying down. When he began to employ his “talking cure” in his psychoanalysis, Freud also had his patients recline on a couch covered with a Persian throw rug given to him as a thank-you gift from a patient named Madame Benvenisti while he took notes in a chair out of sight.

7. The Nazis burned his books and drove him from Austria.

Although an atheist himself, Freud was born into a Jewish family and became a particular target of the Nazis when they rose to power. His books were among those burned by the Nazis in 1933, which caused him to quip: “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burnt me; nowadays they are content with burning my books.” After Germany annexed Austria, the Nazis raided his apartment, and the Gestapo detained and interrogated his daughter, Anna. With the assistance of his friend and patient, Princess Marie Bonaparte, a reluctant Freud fled to Paris and then London with his wife and Anna.

8. Four of his sisters died in Nazi concentration camps.

Bonaparte attempted but failed, to also obtain exit visas for four of Freud’s sisters. The psychoanalyst died just weeks after the launch of World War II. The four sisters left behind in Vienna were eventually sent to Nazi concentration camps, where they died.

9. Freud studied the sex lives of eels.

While enrolled at the University of Vienna, a young Freud studied zoology. On a research trip to Trieste to study the sexual organs of eels, his professor assigned him the task of finding the gonads of the male of the species, a discovery that had eluded scientists for centuries. Freud spent many hours dissecting eels to no avail. “All the eels I have cut open are of the tenderer sex,” he reported.

10. Thieves attempted to steal his ashes.

After Freud’s death, his ashes were placed in an ancient Greek urn given to him by Bonaparte. When his wife, Martha, passed away in 1951, her ashes were added to the vase stored at London’s Golders Green Crematorium. In January 2014, London police reported that thieves had attempted to swipe the Freuds’ ashes. Although the theft was thwarted, the thieves severely damaged the 2,300-year-old urn.

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The Woman Behind Freud’s First Case Study

The case of anna o. showed that psychoanalysis worked. did freud tamper with it.

There is perhaps no one more devoted to the cause than a convert, and there is no one more violent toward it than a person who has lost their faith. The faithful turned faithless take up the act of crusade, but in reverse: new atheists confronting the world with secular eyes, children who learn that their parents aren’t omnipotent. They have suffered the loss of an organizing principle, the very thing they built their life around. Now, they may seek revenge on the object that caused an earlier delusion. The commitment doesn’t end—it just takes on new guises.

Beyond the reactions of former lovers and former zealots, we see this in the history of psychoanalysis, perhaps because the practice attracts and demands those same qualities of immersion and devotion. Many have justly loved psychoanalysis, and many have justly despaired of it. This includes the very founders of rational emotive behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, who brought about a sea change in mental health care, and the critics Frederick Crews, Jeffrey Masson, and Philip Rieff, who turned against Freud even after he had been unthroned as king of the twentieth century. This hatred can feel quasi-personal, aimed at the originator, their father figure, Sigmund Freud.

This loss of faith looms over Gabriel Brownstein’s book, The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud’s Talking Cure . On its face, the book is a study of the first analytic patient (although she didn’t exactly receive psychoanalytic treatment), Bertha Pappenheim. Pappenheim, who was treated by Freud’s mentor Josef Breuer in Vienna, was the subject of one of Breuer’s case studies and was much discussed by Freud throughout his own career. The book’s stated aim is to offer a full portrait of someone flattened and circulated as a specimen. For Pappenheim is best known by another name—Anna O.—and is best known not as her full person, who left a legacy of feminist and activist patronage, but as the world’s most famous hysteric.

But quietly, this is also a book about the birth and death of psychoanalysis—which is to say that the narrative of Freud’s ascendance and betrayal is the engine that drives the book. Brownstein argues, sometimes contradictorily, that Freud’s brilliance and his drive to make his way as a medical doctor propelled him to tamper with Bertha’s story.

Given that Pappenheim’s stunning cure is the origin story of psychoanalysis, Brownstein seeks to denigrate the whole endeavor on these grounds. If the Anna O. case was a fraud, so, too, would the cure be that she discovered.

Hysteria, much like psychoanalysis, has a storied past, one with a powerful crescendo followed by a caesura. Though the term “hysteric” is now assumed in common speech to be either a pejorative epithet, synonymous with performative hyper-emotionality ( he was hysterical ), or a historical diagnosis made up by misogynistic doctors (like, some argue, Breuer and Freud), the condition was once quite common. For the uninitiated, hysteria is an illness where the body speaks, where neurotic symptoms appear in and on it. It was treated by an array of cures, from gynecological massage (prescribed orgasm), hypnotism, rest, and drugging, to change of scenery, and, yes, for a very few patients, starting in the late nineteenth century, Breuer and Freud’s cathartic method. This eventually became psychoanalysis. This was, it must be said, a treatment that seems preferable to the other options.

Bertha Pappenheim was in many ways a typical hysterical patient, and an extraordinary woman. When she went to see Breuer in 1880, she presented with the typical hysterical complaints: partial paralysis, disturbances of appetite and language, pain. She couldn’t recall her native German and only spoke in English. She wouldn’t drink water. She had fallen ill while nursing her father, and her condition deteriorated upon his death. She was treated both in her home and in an asylum, often with high doses of drugs. What marks her case as special is that Pappenheim was the first person on Earth to be treated by the cathartic method, in large part because she invented it. Anytime you hear someone say “talking cure,” they’re using the very term Pappenheim ascribed to the yearslong experiment she undertook, morning and night, with her doctor. As she chattered on, as she engaged in the “chimney sweeping” of her mind—so the story goes—she felt better.

Freud and Breuer went on to co-write the groundbreaking Studies on Hysteria , published in 1895. The two doctors, one senior and one junior, open the book with a co-written introduction and end it with a pair of stand-alone essays (Freud’s undermining Breuer’s) in which the nascent theories of repression, defense, catharsis, and abreaction first appear. Each supplied case material of hysteric women treated by this nascent cathartic method. Freud wrote up four cases, and Breuer only contributed the case of Pappenheim, now disguised and named “Anna O.” The two detailed the symptoms of their patients and how each was aided, if not outright cured, by this new talking protocol.

In Breuer’s write-up of Anna O., which only runs about 25 pages, he elaborates on the case study, telling his readers how ill Anna was, when, and why. He then goes on to describe his therapeutic practice of sitting with her at night, and how, while Anna O. was under hypnosis, the two came to “develop a therapeutic technique” of linking each of her symptoms to the moment it appeared. The water she will not drink, for instance, is linked to a moment she saw her English ladies’ companion let a little dog drink from her glass. After the connection is revealed under hypnosis, Breuer tells us, Anna O. drinks water once more. The process repeated until there were no symptoms left, and Anna O.’s mental state presumably returned to normal.

The problem is—and basically all historians of psychoanalysis agree on this point—that even though Breuer and Freud reported a miracle cure, Anna O. didn’t get better. In fact, she got worse and was put in a sanatorium. The question is why. Brownstein, following the anti-Freud tradition, attributes this failure to the treatment. Freud, of course, attributed this failure to the person who offered the treatment—Breuer—not because he couldn’t cure her, but because he didn’t finish doing so.

Like all origin myths, the case has been subject to endless interpretation and reinterpretation. Even the original case study is retrospective: Breuer didn’t write up the Anna O. case at the time of treatment. He did so at Freud’s urging, so that the two might document this new technique of psychotherapy. Anna O. thus became the first patient of psychoanalysis only after the fact, and even though her treatment has just about nothing in common with psychoanalysis today, she is celebrated as such. Freud then revised the case multiple times across his life (in private letters, then in publications in 1910 and 1914), often to diminish Breuer’s role in the origin of psychoanalysis. This is in part due to what Freud thought of privately as Breuer’s failure: When Anna O. showed Breuer she had transferred onto him—by fantasizing about having his baby—Breuer ran away. Breuer could have invented psychoanalysis had he stayed in the room—but he didn’t dare. And thus Anna remained ill, but, in Freud’s understanding, psychoanalysis was not at fault.

Once Freud died, others revised the case in their own ways. Stacks of books can be called up in any research library by those who either defend or revile Freud—and nearly all of them, at one point, turn to Anna O. These studies often seek to collate and correlate Breuer’s flattened write-up of the case with historical reality, trying to reconstruct both Anna O.’s illness and her medical treatment. Some are feminist rereadings of the case, arguing that Anna O. was sick with patriarchy; others center squarely on Freud’s obsession with the case, excavating his letters about Anna O. to various ends.

What’s plain as day: Pappenheim has become the Rorschach test for the field. What we see in her case tends to be run through our feelings about psychoanalysis. The great historian of psychoanalysis John Forrester has argued that the baby that Anna O. spoke of wanting to have with Breuer was psychoanalysis—something she conceived with Breuer, even though he wouldn’t stick around and take responsibility for it. Anti-Freudian Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen sees Anna O.’s case as entirely fabricated, a young woman taken in by her handsome doctor and given huge quantities of drugs; if she invented psychoanalysis, she was the first to be duped by it. As the late Peter Gay observed, “There are contradictions and obscurities in successive versions of the case, but this much is more or less beyond dispute: In 1880, when Anna O. fell ill, she was twenty-one.”

But because very little besides Breuer’s documents is known of her life at the time of treatment, we project what we want onto her, and we can, for her history is a mere fragment. That we continue to do so makes exquisite sense: Psychoanalysis teaches us we must go back to our origins to go forward. And the treatment of Anna O. by Breuer is one way—a decent way—to conceptualize the start of Freud’s theory of mind.

Brownstein’s main critique of Freud’s use of Anna O. is this: that he took her case for his own material ends (though, by the same token, we might ask after Brownstein’s book advance). Freud was a broke young doctor; he needed to get married, and, to do so, he needed to press Breuer into writing Studies on Hysteria so that he could practice this new treatment with a kind of paternal authorization, styling himself as a doctor of “the cathartic method of J. Breuer.”

Brownstein agrees with anti-Freudians like Borch-Jacobsen and Crews that Anna O.’s treatment was a dismal failure. And even though that would make the lie—that Anna O. was cured—Breuer’s, Brownstein argues it was Freud who metaphorically had a gun to his mentor’s head and forced him to write it. More softly, Brownstein argues that Anna O. obscures Bertha Pappenheim, whom Brownstein now promises to deliver to us. Here’s the problem: Brownstein wants to make Freud the (very) bad guy of a story that had little to do with him, even if he had a great deal to do with the case becoming a story. So much so that Brownstein treats the possibility of Freud seeing Bertha Pappenheim at a party years after the treatment as corroborating evidence for some kind of misdeed.

Brownstein thus rewrites up the notorious case, with his chatty, negative asides and interpretations taking center stage. His first close reading from the book is, appropriately, from the first page. He argues that, though Studies purports to be “about the sex lives and sex drives of young bourgeois women,” it “begins by announcing that, for the purposes of propriety, any discussion of their actual intimate lives will be avoided.” Brownstein argues that this is a cover—that Breuer and Freud are maliciously withholding evidence for their theory because there isn’t any and because the doctors wanted to appear respectable. But if we read the first page of Studies , here’s what Breuer and Freud actually wrote: “It would be a grave breach of confidence to publish material of this kind, with the risk of patients being recognized and their acquaintances becoming informed of facts which were confided only to the physician.” There is a deep truth to what Freud and Breuer argue: They were working in a small coterie of largely wealthy Viennese Jewish patients. Everyone knew one another (hence, the great possibility of Freud running into Pappenheim). If you circulated reports of the ills of a young woman’s “marriage bed” or lack thereof, it would have meant no father would refer his daughter to Breuer or Freud, let alone the greater ethical considerations Brownstein says are gestured to half-heartedly.

Elsewhere, Brownstein accuses Freud of having a faulty memory and disguising the patient (despite the authors’ own opening warning to the reader not to go looking for biographical information of Pappenheim). To cover over the lack of details about her, Brownstein freely narrativizes the case, turning it into a historical fiction. At other times, Brownstein seems furious that Freud tends to write beautifully—Brownstein takes this as a sign of fudging the facts—while he then turns to close reading it like a literary critic.

By the end, we know from Brownstein that we’re supposed to find Breuer largely unobjectionable, but in the grips of a young Freud. The cardinal sin for Brownstein, though, is that Anna O. wasn’t made better. (Brownstein believes that she was in fact suffering from a functional neurological disorder, a contemporary diagnosis that overlaps with hysteria.) She was transported back to the asylum, so ill that Breuer reportedly told Freud his beloved patient might be better off dead, so that she might be free of suffering. Yet we might pause and say something did indeed happen in that treatment: Pappenheim was ultimately able to recover enough. By 1889, at 29 years of age, she was able not only to get out of bed, to talk, but to work in a soup kitchen. From this year on, she published—first anonymously and then pseudonymously, under the name Paul Berthold. Soon, Pappenheim was finally known not as Anna O., not as Berthold, but as herself. She also became famous as herself, a powerful, feminist leader, founding the Jewish Women’s Association and centralizing Jewish women’s organizing toward both employment and charity.

Why a book about Bertha Pappenheim now? One answer: With its claim that it will deliver readers Pappenheim in full, Brownstein’s book sits on that ever-expanding shelf of nonfiction books that seek to tell the stories of women who have been relegated to the margins of history, returning them to their larger, unobfuscated import. The book, too, in trying to bring Pappenheim’s story up to the present by rediagnosing her with functional neurological disorder, joins the book market for explorations of contested illness. Yet this book isn’t exactly proper to either of these subgenres. Instead, we might make sense of it as a work of backlash: Just as a range of analysts and writers have turned once more to Freud (as The New York Times proclaimed in an article not quite aptly titled “Not Your Daddy’s Freud”), so have others returned to maligning him. Brownstein has offered us, perhaps, the first book of the Freud Wars 2.0.

Brownstein, in fact, inherits the role of Freud skeptic from an earlier generation. His father, Dr. Shale Brownstein, was a prominent New York psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a Rolodex of famous patients. Sometime in the 1980s, Dr. Brownstein became disillusioned with psychoanalysis and became an anti-Freudian—though we are never quite told why. One night, when Brownstein went to visit his father, he found him in his underwear, speaking wildly. The subject: Bertha Pappenheim. His father held a thick envelope filled with scientific and historic papers, newspaper clippings, reviews of books, and his own essay on the subject.

His father gave him the manila envelope. The younger Brownstein went home to Brooklyn, and the next day his father was dead. As if in a novel, Brownstein then becomes fixated on the envelope and its contents only to discover he has misplaced it. His own book is as much an attempt to decipher his father’s theory about Bertha Pappenheim as to understand his father’s turn against Freud. Brownstein makes clear that his father was a devoted doctor, and treated queer luminaries in downtown New York, including Peter Hujar and Richard Serra. Dr. Brownstein tended to babies with HIV in the 1980s who languished otherwise in their cots, when others wouldn’t dare go near. Dr. Brownstein gave everything to psychoanalysis, but then something changed. We don’t quite know what, but his father became so disillusioned that he burned all 24 volumes of Freud’s Standard Edition .

Was it the homophobia of mainstream psychoanalysis that rightfully made him repudiate his training? Was it indeed the legacy of Anna O.? I wish we knew what Brownstein felt as he wrestled with Freud via his father. As author and son, Brownstein is overwhelmed by the research subject he must now try to understand and, more importantly, terribly overwhelmed by the pain of being alive when life is most brutal. Shortly after his father’s death, his wife is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and when the global pandemic arrives, Brownstein must weather it without them.

While Brownstein seemingly hates Freud, he, like many others, can’t escape him. Early in the book, he disparages two Freudian terms: “secondary gain,” which can be described as the unconscious advantage patients acquire through their illness (stereotyped here as attention), and “ la belle indifférence ,” a calm character in the face of crisis. But toward the book’s close, Brownstein suddenly tips his hand: He comes to a form of self-understanding through these concepts. In not getting treated for a heart problem, he says he has a case of la belle indifférence . In writing the book, he self-analyzes, he can be understood as having a case of secondary gain—after all, Brownstein was quite literally paid for producing it.

But Brownstein uses these concepts defensively—to show his reader he is in on the joke. The book itself, more movingly, is a testament to yet another set of Freudian concepts: the return of the repressed, as evidenced by his return to the use of Freud; working through (here, loss of his father, his wife); and, indeed, sublimation. Writing the book then might be an act of Freudian sublimation; it is also an act of devotion.

Hannah Zeavin is an assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley. She is the author of The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy .