Psychoanalysis

1899

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

Trained in Vienna as a neurologist by the leading medical scientists of his day, Sigmund Freud used reason to show that humans often are motivated by forces of unreason, including sex, anger, and fear. His ideas have been explored in literature, drama, painting, and architecture in addition to the clinical fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, and counseling.

Freud was an excellent student with a voracious intellectual curiosity who chose medicine as his life’s work. His education sensitized him to the importance of motivation and the dynamic character of human behavior. His desire to be a great scientist led to six years in a laboratory doing careful studies of the nervous systems of fish and other creatures. After he fell in love with Martha Bernays, he became a clinician in order to have an income suitable for supporting a family.

A fellowship in Paris with the noted neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot led to the clinical insight that trauma plays a role in Hysteria by causing ideas to become dissociated from rational thought. Upon his return to Vienna, he learned about the talking cure that his mentor, Josef Breuer, had applied in the case of Anna O. in 1880. All of this was used by Freud to formulate the first principles of psychoanalysis. He developed the techniques of dream analysis and free association to gain access to his patients’ unconscious. He also first described the clinical phenomena of repression, transference, and countertransference, which became the bedrock of psychoanalytic practice.

Until his death, Freud continued to refine his theory, as he constantly learned from the application of his ideas in an active clinical practice. Freud theorized about children’s development, the origin of neuroses, the role of instinctual behavior, and the emergence and use of psychological defense mechanisms. He wrote about the role of religion, which he called an illusion, and articulated why civilization created psychological conflicts. His theoretical and clinical work was the primary contributor to the creation of psychological subjectivity during the twentieth century.

SEE ALSO Hysteria (1886), Oedipus Complex (1897), The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Jungian Psychology (1913), Defense Mechanisms (1936), Psychosomatic Medicine (1939)

International Psychoanalytic Congress, with Sigmund Freud in the center of the second row, 1911.