His active scientific activity lasted more than 40 years. He created his school in psychology and psychiatry, laid the foundations of the theory of personality and the revision of scientific views on the nature of man. His techniques are used in contemporary art history. His name - Sigmund Freud - is well known to everyone, even people very far from science.
Sigismund Freud's childhood
Sigmund Freud (full name - Sigismund Shlomo Freud) was born on May 6, 1856 in the town of Freiberg. Today it is the Czech city of Pribor, and at that time Freiberg, like the whole Czech Republic, was part of the Austrian Empire. The ancestors of his father, Jacob Freud, lived in Germany, and his mother, Amalia Natanson, was from Odessa. She was thirty years younger than her husband and, in fact, played the role of a leader in the family.
Jacob Freud had his own fabric trading business. Soon after the birth of the future famous psychoanalyst for his father’s business, hard days came. Almost broke, he moved with his whole family first to Leipzig, and then to Vienna. The first years in the Austrian capital were difficult for the Freuds, but after a couple of years, Jacob, the father of Sigmund, rose to his feet, and their life was more or less adjusted.
Getting an education
Sigmund graduated with honors from the gymnasium, but all universities were not opened in front of him. He was limited by lack of funds in the family and anti-Semitic sentiments in higher education. The impetus for deciding on further education was once heard by him a lecture on nature, built on the basis of Goethe's philosophical essay. Freud entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, but quickly realized that the career of a general practitioner was not for him. He was much more attracted to psychology, which he became interested in at the lectures of the famous psychologist Ernst von Brücke. In 1881, having received a medical degree, he continued to work in the Brucke laboratory, but this activity was not profitable and Freud got a job as a doctor in a Vienna hospital. After working for several months in surgery, the young doctor switched to neurology. In the course of medical practice, he studied methods for treating paralysis in children and even published several scientific articles on this topic. He was the first to use the term “cerebral palsy, ” and his work in this area earned him a reputation as a good neuropathologist. He later published articles in which he created the first classification of cerebral palsy.
Getting medical experience
In 1983, Freud transferred to the service in the psychiatric ward. Work in psychiatry served as the basis for writing several scientific publications, including the article "Studies on Hysteria", written later (in 1895) together with the physician Joseph Breyer and considered the first scientific work in the history of psychoanalysis. In the next two years, Freud changed his specialization several times. He worked in the venereal department of the hospital, while studying the relationship of syphilis with diseases of the nervous system. Then he went to the department of nervous diseases.
During this period of his activity, Freud turned to the study of the psycho-stimulating properties of cocaine. He experienced the effects of cocaine on himself. Freud was very impressed with the analgesic properties of this substance, used it in his medical practice and promoted it as an effective medicine in the treatment of depression, neurosis, alcoholism, certain types of drug addiction, syphilis and sexual disorders. Sigmund Freud has published several scientific papers on the properties of cocaine and its use in medicine. The medical and scientific community criticized him for these articles. After several years, cocaine was recognized by all European doctors as a dangerous drug, the same as opium and alcohol. However, Freud had already acquired cocaine addiction by that time and had even planted several of his acquaintances and patients on cocaine.
In 1985, the young doctor managed to get an internship at a psychiatric clinic in Paris. In the capital of France, he worked under the guidance of the famous psychiatrist Jean Charcot. Freud himself had very high hopes for an internship under the guidance of a venerable scientist. He wrote at that time to his bride:"
I’ll go to Paris, become a great scientist and return to Vienna with a big, just huge halo above my head. "Having returned the next year from France, Freud really opened his own neuropathological practice, where he treated neurosis with hypnosis.
Sigmund Freud Family Life
A year after returning from Paris, Freud married Martha Bernays. He had known each other for four years, but Freud, who did not have a good income, did not consider himself able to provide for his wife, who was used to living in abundance. Private medical practice brought the best income, and in September 1886 Sigmund and Martha got married. The biographers of the great psychoanalyst note the very strong and tender feelings that bound Freud and Bernays. In the four years from dating to marriage, Sigmund wrote to his bride more than 900 letters. They lived in love for 53 years - until the death of Freud. Marta once said that for all these 53 years they have not said one another an evil or offensive word. The wife gave birth to Freud six children. Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter followed in the footsteps of her father. Anna Freud became the founder of child psychoanalysis.
Creating Psychoanalysis and Contributing to Science
By the mid-nineties, Freud was strengthened in the opinion that the cause of hysterical conditions is the repressed consciousness of sexual memories. In 1986, Sigmund Freud's father died and the scientist fell into a severe depression. Freud decided to treat the neurosis that developed on the basis of depression on his own - studying his childhood memories by the method of free association. To enhance the effectiveness of self-medication, Freud turned to the analysis of his dreams. This practice turned out to be very painful, but gave the expected result. In 1990, Sigmund Freud published a book that he himself considered the main work in psychoanalysis: "The Interpretation of Dreams."
The release of the book did not create a furor in the scientific community, but gradually around Freud a group of followers and like-minded people began to form. The meeting of the supporters of psychoanalysis in Freud’s house was called the Psychological Society on Wednesdays. For several years this society has grown significantly. Freud himself, meanwhile, has published several works that are significant for the theory of psychoanalysis, including: "Wit and its relation to the unconscious" and "Three essays on the theory of sexuality." At the same time, Freud's popularity as a practicing psychoanalyst grew steadily. Patients from other countries began to come to see him. In 1909, Freud received an invitation to lecture in the United States. The following year, his book, Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, is published.
In 1913, Sigmund Freud published the book Totem and Taboo on the origin of morality and religion. In 1921, Psychology of the Masses and the Analysis of the Human Self came out, in which the scientist uses psychoanalysis tools to explain social phenomena.
