Sigmund Freud Installment #1

          Sigmund Freud was a man of many accomplishments. Physiologist, neurologist, psychologist, powerful thinker, as well as the father of psychoanalysis are some words used to describe him. Freud took his first breath on May 6, 1856, in the town of Freiberg which is now part of the Czech Republic. His family moved to Vienna when he was four years old and this is where he remained for the majority of his life.
          Above all, Freud considered himself a scientist. In 1873, he enrolled in medical school at the University of Vienna where he initially focused on biology and eventually began to specialize in neurology. In 1881, Freud received his medical degree and became engaged to be married the next year. Freud's happy marriage produced  him six children. His youngest daughter, Anna, would go on to become a distinguished psychoanalyst. Upon graduation, Freud opened his own private practice to treat psychological disorders. With science being at its utmost importance to Freud, he yearned to understand human experience and knowledge.
          Freud spent 1885-86 in Paris where he observed French neurologist Jean Charcot using hypnotism as a form of treatment for unusual mental conditions and hysteria. Freud was so impressed by Charcot's work that he began his own experimentation on hypnosis when he returned to Vienna. He was disappointed when he found that the beneficial effects of hypnosis were not long lasting. After this realization, Freud became influenced by his colleague and friend, Josef Breuer. Breuer had found that when he told a hysterical patient to talk unrestricted about when their earliest symptoms started to occur, the symptoms would sometimes gradually adapt. Freud partnered with Breuer on the idea that neuroses originated from incredibly traumatic instances that had happened in the patient's past that now were being hidden from consciousness. The treatment was to make the patient remember the forgotten experience. This technique is explained in detail in Studies in Hysteria, published by Freud and Breuer in 1895.

          Freud and Breuer parted ways when the two disagreed on the amount of emphasis Freud was putting on sexual origins of neuroses. In 1900, Freud went on to publish what is regarded as his best work, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. This was accompanied in 1905 by Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Freud's emphasis on sexuality made his psychoanalytic theory unsuccessful. Freud was pretty much disregarded until he was recognized in 1908 at the First International Psychoanalytical Congress held in Salzburg. With this recognition, Freud was invited in 1909 to lecture in the United States. This formed the foundation of his 1916 book Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Freud's fame skyrocketed from there.
          In Freud's life, he produced more than twenty volumes of clinical studies and theoretical works. In 1923, he revised his views of the mind and published The Ego and the Id. Freud learned in his later years that not everyone would agree with his teachings. Though Sigmund Freud died of Cancer in 1939 while exiled in England, the legacy he left will live on.
-The next installment: Freud's philosophies and my thoughts on him.
Sources: www.iep.utm.edu/freud/ https://www.biography.com/people/sigmund-freud-9302400