The son of a Jewish wool merchant, Freud grew up in Vienna after his family moved there during his childhood. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873, earned a medical degree in 1881, and worked in neuropathology and clinical neurology before studying hysteria with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris in 1885. Back in Vienna, he married Martha Bernays in 1886, opened a private practice, and began treating patients whose physical symptoms lacked a clear organic cause. The couple had six children; their youngest daughter, Anna, became a psychoanalyst and child analyst.
His collaboration with the physician Josef Breuer, including their discussions of Breuer's patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., led to Studies on Hysteria (1895), which presented the cathartic method - talking through traumatic memories - as a treatment for hysterical symptoms. Freud soon replaced hypnosis with free association and argued that dreams express repressed wishes. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) became the founding text of psychoanalysis, while The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) extended his account of unconscious mental life and infantile sexuality.
Freud gathered followers in Vienna and abroad, including Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank, and helped establish the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1910. The movement also produced sharp disputes: Adler and Jung broke with him. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Freud introduced the concept of the death drive; The Ego and the Id (1923) set out the id, ego, and superego; and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) examined aggression, guilt, and the costs of culture.
After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Freud, who was Jewish, left Vienna for London with his family. He had been treated for oral cancer since 1923 and underwent numerous surgeries. He died in London in 1939.
Freud's clinical method and theories made psychoanalysis a major force in twentieth-century thought. Ideas such as repression, transference, and the unconscious entered ordinary language and influenced psychiatry, literary criticism, art, and anthropology. Yet psychoanalysis has also been criticized for weak empirical support and for drawing broad conclusions from individual cases; arguments over its scientific status continue.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Pribor, Moravskoslezsky, Czech Republic. In Cardology (Destiny Cards), May 6, 1856 corresponds to the King of Diamonds, making the King of Diamonds his Birth Card.
In numerology, the name adds another layer to the birth-date profile. The letters of a person’s name are used to explore inner motivation, personality, expression, and the qualities they bring into relationships and everyday life. Explore how his original name Sigismund Schlomo Freud influences his life and personality.
Sigmund Freud Quotes
“Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.” - Sigmund Freud
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