Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud froid , 1856-1939, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis . Born in Moravia, he lived most of his life in Vienna, receiving his medical degree from the Univ. of Vienna in 1881.

His medical career began with an apprenticeship (1885-86) under J. M. Charcot in Paris, and soon after his return to Vienna he began his famous collaboration with Josef Breuer on the use of hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria. Their paper, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (1893, tr. 1909), more fully developed in Studien über Hysterie (1895), marked the beginnings of psychoanalysis in the discovery that the symptoms of hysterical patients—directly traceable to psychic trauma in earlier life—represent undischarged emotional energy (conversion; see hysteria ). The therapy, called the cathartic method, consisted of having the patient recall and reproduce the forgotten scenes while under hypnosis. The work was poorly received by the medical profession, and the two men soon separated over Freud's growing conviction that the undefined energy causing conversion was sexual in nature.

Freud then rejected hypnosis and devised a technique called free association (see association ), which would allow emotionally charged material that the individual had repressed in the unconscious to emerge to conscious recognition. Further works, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, tr. 1913), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904, tr. 1914), and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905, tr. 1910), increased the bitter antagonism toward Freud, and he worked alone until 1906, when he was joined by the Swiss psychiatrists Eugen Bleuler and C. G. Jung , the Austrian Alfred Adler , and others.

In 1908, Bleuler, Freud, and Jung founded the journal Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, and in 1909 the movement first received public recognition when Freud and Jung were invited to give a series of lectures at Clark Univ. in Worcester, Mass. In 1910 the International Psychoanalytical Association was formed with Jung as president, but the harmony of the movement was short-lived: between 1911 and 1913 both Jung and Adler resigned, forming their own schools in protest against Freud's emphasis on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. Although these men, and others who broke away later, objected to Freudian theories, the basic structure of psychoanalysis as the study of unconscious mental processes is still Freudian. Disagreement lies largely in the degree of emphasis placed on concepts largely originated by Freud.

He considered his last contribution to psychoanalytic theory to be The Ego and the Id (1923, tr. 1927), after which he reverted to earlier cultural preoccupations. Totem and Taboo (1913, tr. 1918), an investigation of the origins of religion and morality, and Moses and Monotheism (1939, tr. 1939) are the result of his application of psychoanalytic theory to cultural problems. With the National Socialist occupation of Austria, Freud fled (1938) to England, where he died the following year.

Freudian theory has had wide impact, influencing fields as diverse as anthropology, education, art, and literary criticism. His daughter, Anna Freud , was a major proponent of psychoanalysis, developing in particular the Freudian concept of the defense mechanism . Other works include A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1910, tr. 1920) and New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933).

Bibliography: See his Basic Writings (tr. and ed. by A. A. Brill, 1938, repr., 1977); The Freud-Jung Letters, ed. by W. McGuire (1974, repr. 1988); biographies by E. Jones (3 vol., 1953-57, abr. ed. 1974) and P. Gay (1988); studies by P. Roazen (1975), H. Lewis (2 vol., 1981-83), S. Schneiderman (1987), O. Olson and S. Koppe (1988), I. Gubrich-Simitis (1993, tr. 1997), and L. Breger (2000).

Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), born at Freiberg in Moravia, and known as the creator of psychoanalysis, a science (or, as some claim, a mythology) which has had an incalculable effect both on literature and on literary theory. Freud practised for many years in Vienna, until Hitler's invasion of Austria drove him to London, where he died. His theories of the normal and abnormal mind were evolved originally from his study of neurotic ailments. His many contributions to knowledge include his studies of the development of the sexual instinct in children, his descriptions of the workings of the unconscious mind and of the nature of repression, and his examinations and interpretations of dreams. Many of his concepts have become universally familiar in a vulgarized form, e.g. the Oedipus complex, the death wish, the family romance, penis envy, phallic symbolism, and the formulation of the divisions between the ‘Id, the Ego and the Superego’. Such phrases rapidly acquired a currency even among those who had not read the works of Freud, and direct or indirect influence is frequently hard to ascertain. A characteristic case is that of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913), considered by many a classic example of a novel about the Oedipus complex. L. Strachey, in Elizabeth and Essex (1928), produced what is possibly the first consciously Freud-oriented biography; its many successors include Leon Edel's life of H. James. The significance for both biographers and novelists of Freud's stress on the formative experiences of childhood is obvious; equally obvious is the importance to poets and prose-writers such as Joyce of Freud's theories of word association, although Joyce always indignantly repudiated the influence of Freud. Freud's works were made available in English by James Strachey, Lytton's brother, who was responsible for the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols, 1953–73). The works reveal Freud himself as a writer of great distinction. (See psychoanalytic criticism.)