The Biography of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, to a Jewish family in Freiberg, Moravia. Freud's father was Jakob Freud and his mother was Amalia Nathansohn. Freud had two older brothers and seven other siblings. "When Freud was four, his family moved to Vienna, Austria, where Freud spent most of his life until 1983, when he was forced to flee to England because of the Nazi invasion"(WU,2003 par.2).
At the age of 17 Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. Freud graduated in 1882, and got a job at the Vienna General Hospital, specializing in neurology. Freud then studied in Paris where he became interested in the treatment of an emotional disorder known as hysteria when he studied under the famous French neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. It was there that Freud changed from neurology to psychopathology, the branch of psychology that deals with the abnormal workings of the mind (Freud, 1856-1939, par.1).
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking ...
Statue of Sigmund Freud in London, with the Tavist...
Sigmund Freud QuoteFreud then went back to Vienna and married Martha Bernys, and they had six children together. In Vienna, Freud "published a paper with Breuer, which expanded in 1895 to Studien Uber Hysterie (Studies in Heysteia), marking the beginnings of psychoanalysis. Recalling significant events from his own childhood (triggered by the death of his father in 1896) and from those of his patients, he became convinced, despite his own puritan sensibilities, of the certainty of infantile sexuality. The name he gave to his concept of the 'Oedipus Complex', the name he gave to the erotic feelings of a son for his mother, and its associated sense of competition with the father" (Freud, 1856-1939, par. 3).
Freud analyzed himself to decode his dreams for the meaning or purpose of the dreams. "In 1902 he was appointed to a chair of neuropathology in Vienna,