Sigmund Freud

I

Introduction

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician, neurologist, and founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of human personality. Through his skill as a scientist, physician, and writer, Freud combined ideas prevalent at the time with his own observation and study to produce a major theory of psychology. Most importantly, he applied these ideas to medical practice in the treatment of mental illness. His newly created psychotherapy treatments and procedures, many of which in modified form are applied today, were based on his understanding of unconscious thought processes and their relationship to neurotic symptoms (see Neurosis). Regarded with skepticism at the time, Freud’s ideas have waxed and waned in acceptance ever since. Nevertheless, he is regarded as one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century.

II

Freud’s Life

Freud was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Freiberg, Moravia (now Příbor, Czech Republic), on May 6, 1856. When he was three years old his family, fleeing from the anti-Semitic riots then raging in Freiberg, moved to the German city of Leipzig. Shortly thereafter, the family settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life.

Although Freud’s ambition from childhood had been a career in law, he became intrigued by the rapidly developing sciences of the day after reading the work of British scientist Charles Darwin. Freud decided to become a medical student shortly before he entered Vienna University in 1873. Inspired by the scientific investigations of the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Freud was driven by an intense desire to study natural science and to solve some of the challenging problems confronting contemporary scientists.

In his third year at the university Freud began research work on the central nervous system in the physiological laboratory under the direction of German physician Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. Neurological research was so engrossing that Freud neglected the prescribed courses and as a result remained in medical school three years longer than was normally required to qualify as a physician. In 1881, after completing a year of compulsory military service, he received his medical degree. Unwilling to give up his experimental work, however, he remained at the university, working in the physiological laboratory. At Brücke’s urging, he reluctantly abandoned theoretical research to gain practical experience.

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Freud then spent three years at the General Hospital of Vienna, devoting himself successively to psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous diseases. In 1885, following his appointment as a lecturer in neuropathology at Vienna University, he left his post at the hospital. Later that year he worked in Paris with French neurologist Jean Charcot.

On his return to Vienna in 1886 Freud began private practice in neurology. Also that year Freud married Martha Bernays, to whom he had become engaged four years earlier. The first of their children was born the following year. Their family would become complete with the birth of Anna in 1895, who herself would become an important psychoanalyst (see Anna Freud).

In 1902 Freud was appointed professor of neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. In 1923 he developed cancer of the jaw. Although repeated operations and prosthetic appliances in his mouth made his life most uncomfortable, he continued working incessantly until his death. When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, Freud was persuaded by friends to escape with his family to England. He died in London on September 23, 1939.

III

Freud’s Work

Freud was by training a research scientist and a physician. His decision to devote himself to the neglected and poorly understood area of emotional disorders has to do with currents of the time as well as his own interests. Chief among these was the prevailing attitude toward scientific endeavor at the time. Scientists were looking for causes and for connections between previously unrelated phenomena. Although Jewish by birth and cultural tradition, Freud saw all religion as illusory and was non-practicing. Instead, he can be seen as a determinist, viewing the world and human experience as understandable in terms of cause and effect.

A

Hypnosis and the Influence of Charcot

In 1885 Freud was awarded a government grant enabling him to spend 19 weeks in Paris as a student of French neurologist Jean Charcot. Charcot, who was the director of the clinic at the mental hospital, the Salpêtrière, was then treating nervous disorders by the use of hypnotic suggestion. Fascinated by the apparent success of these treatments, Freud met and studied with several of the leading figures in the field.

Charcot’s group had been tackling the problem of hysteria, a term derived from the Greek word for “womb.” Hysteria traditionally was seen as a condition of women and was characterized by unexplained fainting, paralysis, loss of sensation, tics, and tremors. In time, Charcot came to see that men could also be so troubled. Although the mechanism of hysteria was not understood, Charcot and his contemporaries showed that its symptoms could be cured by hypnosis. Freud’s studies under Charcot influenced him greatly in channeling his interests to psychopathology (the study and treatment of disorders of the mind).

In his practice in Vienna, Freud met many patients with nervous disorders for which there was no apparent physical cause. Their symptoms included paralyzed limbs, tics, tremors, loss of consciousness, memory impairment, and numbness that could not be explained. These unexplained cases were labeled as “neurotic,” meaning that they were similar to neurological conditions. In time they became known collectively as “neuroses.”

Freud’s observation of Charcot’s use of hypnosis in the treatment of similar disorders led him to conclude that there could be powerful mental processes operating that remain hidden from conscious understanding. He began to employ hypnosis in his own practice, publishing articles on the subject in 1892. Freud came to understand hysterical neurotic symptoms as the product of a conflict between opposing mental forces. Conscious forces representing “will” were balanced by unconscious opposing forces representing “counterwill.” He understood hypnosis to act on the side of will to subjugate the counterwill, thus obliterating the symptom. The idea of conflict proposed in the 1892 paper “A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism: With Some Remarks on the Origin of Hysterical Symptoms Through ‘Counterwill’” was to become a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis.

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