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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. He theorized that the symptoms of hysterical patients represent forgotten and unresolved infantile psychosexual conflicts, and his theories profoundly influenced 20th-century psychology as well as other fields. Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia, in the what was then the Austrian Empire but is now part of the Czech Republic. Little is known about his childhood, as he was a very private person and destroyed his personal papaers. However, it is known that he was an outstanding student and that he attended the University of Vienna. In 1886 Freud returned to Vienna, where he established a private practice specializing in nervous and brain disorders. He experimented with hypnotism on his most hysteric and neurotic patients, However, he eventually gave up the practice, as he found that he could get his patients to talk by using free association, which merely consisted of putting them on a couch and encouraging them to say whatever came into their minds. Freud and his family fled Austria in 1938 as a result of the Nazi annexation, and they settled in England. He died the following year as a result of a physician-assisted suicide that he requested because he could no longer tolerate the pain of his cancer of the mouth. Freud had begun smoking at the age of 24 and continued smoking even after developing increasingly severe health problems and despite warnings from his physicians. Likely contributing to his health problems was the fact that he was a chronic user of cocaine. Created October 23, 2006. |