An Influential Mind: Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis.
He is regarded as one of the most influential minds of the 20th century.
Freud was born on 6th May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic). He went to school in Vienna.
He was a handsome boy. He was thin but not very tall. He had short, straight, brown hair when he was young.
He was always hardworking and patient. In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna.
After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital.
He worked with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by applying hypnosis.
In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot.
On his return to Vienna the following year,Freud set up in private practice, studied nervous and brain disorders.
The same year he married Martha Bernays and he had six children.
In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, he published his first book 'The Interpretation of Dreams'.
He taught people that our dreams say something about our psychology.
In 1902, he became Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, and worked there until 1938.
In 1910, he founded the International Psychoanalytic Association with Carl Jung, a close friend of Freud's.
Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.
After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history,
art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published another book 'The Ego and the ID'.
In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis invaded Austria,
Freud left Vienna and moved to London with his wife and daughter Anna.
In 1923, he learnt that he had cancer. He was a brave person and underwent more than 30 operations.
Sadly, he died of cancer on 23rd September 1939.