Sigmund Frued

Neurologist, Founder of Psychoanalysis

Freud entered the University of Vienna in 1873 as a medical student, and the General Hospital of Vienna in 1882. In 1885, he went to Paris to study with the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, which proved a turning point in his career. Charcot's work with patients classified as hysterics introduced Freud to the possibility that mental disorders might be caused by purely psychological factors rather than by organic brain disease.

Upon his return to Vienna, he entered into a fruitful partnership with the physician Josef Breuer. They collaborated on "Studies in Hysteria," which contains a presentation of Freud's pioneering psychoanalytic method of free association. It was this method that allowed Freud to arrive at numerous new insights; he developed theories concerning the deeper layers of the mind - the unconscious; he arrived at an understanding of neurosis; and in 1899 he published "The Interpretation of Dreams," in which he analyzed the highly complex symbolic processes underlying dream formation.

In 1905, appeared his controversial study "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," in which he presented his discoveries concerning infantile sexuality, and in which he delineated the complicated stages of psychosexual development, including the formation of the Oedipus complex.

Freud also applied his psychoanalytic insights to mythological, anthropological, cultural, and religious phenomena. Among his most noted works in this vein are "Totem and Taboo" (1913) and "Civilization and Its Discontents" (1930). Although he started his practice in the late 1800's, Freud exercised his greatest impact over civilization during the twentieth century. He died in 1939.