Sigmund Freud

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On the day of May 6, 1856 Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia. Freiberg, Moravia is now known as Pribor, Czech Republic. Freud moved around a lot as a child. His father was a wool merchant, whose business failed in Moravia, so they moved to Leipzig and then to Vienna. In 1937 the Nazis annexed Austria, and Freud, who was Jewish, was allowed to leave for England.

He enrolled at the medical school at the University of Vienna in 1873. He received his medical degree in 1881. In 1882 he was engaged to be married, he worked as a doctor at Vienna General Hospital. Shortly after his marriage in 1886, Freud set up a private practice in the treatment of psychological disorders. In 1885-86 Freud spent most of the year in Paris. He was very much interested in the works of Jean Charcot, who was using hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions.

Freud found that this did not work well, and the results were short term.

Freud went back to Vienna and worked with an old friend Josef Breuer. Together they worked on, formulated, and developed the idea that many neuroses had their origins in deeply traumatic experiences. These experiences had occurred in the past life of the patient but which were now forgotten, hidden from consciousness. In 1895, published Studies in Hysteria a book about the ideas traumatic past experiences. "In 1900, after a protracted period of self-analysis, he published The Interpretation of Dreams, which is generally regarded as his greatest work, and this was followed in 1901 by The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and in 1905 by Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." In 1909 he was asked to give a course of lectures in the United States, from this came his...