Sigmund Freud
Gender
Occupation
WriterBirth Date
1856CE May 6thBirth Place
Pribor, Czech RepublicDeath Date
Death Place
London, United KingdomRelationships
AcquaintanceBiography
On May 6, 1856, the Moravian town of Freiburg saw the birth of Sigismund Schlomo Freud to Jacob Freud, a Jewish wool merchant, and his third wife Amalia. Sigismund, who would adopt the name Sigmund during his high school years, was a gifted and determined child who would grow up to become known as the founding father of psychoanalysis and thus of the modern field of psychology. When Sisimund was three, the Freuds’ moved to Leipzig. The following year they moved to Vienna, the city where Freud would live out most of his life.
Freud graduated high school summa cum laude and in 1873 began his medical education at the University of Vienna. In 1881, after delays for a year of mandatory military service as well as additional research in neurology and histology, he received his M.D. Freud began work at the Vienna General Hospital in 1882 and remained there until 1886 when he opened his own private clinic to specialize in nervous disorders.
Over the two decades after receiving his M.D., Freud dived into the research which lay the foundational thought for his psychoanalytic theories. He studied hypnosis, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, and rest cures, which in turn led to ideas surrounding anxiety, neuroses, obsessions, phobias and hysteria.
The relationships Freud made during the 1880s and ’90s were incredibly significant. Not only did he meet and marry Martha Bernays with whom he had six children, but he also developed both a personal and working relationship with Dr. Joseph Breuer, a partnership which gave trajectory to the course of his research. Breuer, with whom Freud regularly swapped ideas, shared a specific case with Freud (that of Anna O.) which prompted him to note “the power of the unconscious processes to produce symptoms of psychopathy” in his journal (Stagner 295).
On November 4, 1899, the publishing house of Leipzig and Vienna published Die Traumdetung or The Interpretation of Dreams. This book was a conglomeration of Freud’s ideas and research from the past twenty years, and while his ideas would modify over the course of his career it contained the core of what would become known as Freudian psychology; namely, it explored the nature and the function of the unconscious. However, despite Freud’s knowledge that if his work was taken seriously the field of psychology would have to find a new foundation, the first printing saw only 351 copies sold, and the second printing was not until 1909 (Gay 4)
Freud’s groundbreaking theories developed and changed over the course of his career; however, certain key concepts remained the same. Freud stated that human consciousness was generally kept separate from the unconscious by such means as a (theoretical) membrane. However, snatches of the unconscious could be seen through changes in conscious processes. When the unconscious pressed too hard on the membrane, conscious thought, action and speech would be altered, producing neurotic symptoms. Freud also stated his belief that the prime human motivational energy was the libido, and that the personality was divided into three aspects: the id, the ego and the superego. (Stagner 301).
In 1902, the desire to discuss ideas with like-minded colleges led Freud to found the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Notable members included Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Stekel, Carl Jung and Otto Rank. Unfortunately, due to friction within the group (mainly attributed to Freud’s rigid disagreement with several opinions), Adler left in 1911, shortly followed by a number of other members. (Stagner 297) Despite this, there were soon psychoanalytical societies in Berlin, Budapest, London, New York and Zurich (Willis 298). Freud continued to publish voraciously during this period.
In 1919, Freud and a number of his colleagues founded a publishing house, the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. This house included three psychoanalytic journals, including Imago, of which Freud eventually became the editor. Freud was heavily invested in this project and would often donate royalties from his work to keep the business afloat. (Willis 298).
At the same time, the establishment of an English branch of the publishing house was proposed by Ernest Jones, a British psychoanalyst, with the support of Otto Rank. This would enable the publication of English translations of the firm’s books as well as numerous other works through an English journal, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Freud heartily approved this plan and the journal was founded in 1920 with Jones at its head. (Willis 298-9). Shortly afterwards, the publication of the International Psycho-Analytic Library- translations of most of the Verlag’s books in numerical sequence- began (Willis 299).
In 1924, Jones and Freud decided to create an English translation of Freud’s Collected Papers through the IPL. To do so, they entered into a business relationship with Leonard and Virginia Woolf and their Hogarth Press (Willis 300). Although the Woolf’s were initially wary of publishing Freud’s work on the basis of possible legal action against “obscenity” as well as financial failure, they soon became Freud’s primary means of English-language publication in partnership with the IPL; between 1921 and 1939, thirteen books and two epitomes of Freud’s work were published (Willis 300, 323). It is important to note, however, that in 1924 when the Hogarth Press joined with the IPL, they took possession of several unbound sheets of the manuscript of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (along with Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, and the first volume of Freud’s Collected Papers) which were sequentially bound and imprinted by the Hogarth Press; therefore the Hogarth Press is considered the publisher of the 1922 edition of these books even though they did not officially work with Freud until 1924. (Woolmer 13-15).
In 1933, the growing force of anti-Semitism combined with the rise of Nazism led to the burning of Freud’s books in the streets. Despite this, Freud refused to leave his home in Vienna. In 1938, Freud was arrested by the Nazi party, and it was only through the intervention of the American ambassador to France, President Roosevelt and William Bullitt as well as his wealthy patient Marie Bonaparte that Freud was ransomed and taken to London, England, where he spent the small remainder of his life. During this last year of his life, Freud finally met Leonard and Virginia Woolf, who had been publishing his work for several years at this point.
Freud died on September 23, 1939, from an overdose of morphine given him by his physician, Max Schur, while suffering advanced stages of jaw cancer.
Selected Further Reading
Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life for our Time. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print.
Stagner, Ross. A History of Psychological Theories. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1988. Print.
Willis, J.H. Jr. Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-41. Charlottesville: UP
of Virginia, 1992. Print.
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of Hogarth Press 1917-1946. Revere, Pennsylvania: Woolmer/
Brotherson, 1986. Print.
Further Reading
Freud Archives
The Collection of the International Psychoanalytic University of Berlin. International Psychoanalytic
Society. 9 June 2015. <https://archive.org/details/CollectionOfTheInternationalPsychoanalyticUn...
The Institute of Psychoanalysis. (2013). 9 June 2015.
<http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/archives/access.php>
Kansas Historical Society. Kansas Memory. 28 May 2015
<http://www.kansasmemory.org/locate.php?query=Freud>
Freud Biographies
Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life for our Time. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print.
Geller, Jay. On Freud’s Jewish Body. New York: Fordham UP, 2007. Print.
Jones, Ernest. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. 3 vols. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1953. Print.
Kramer, Peter D. Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind. Eminent Lives. New York, NY: HarperCollins,
2006. Print.
Phillips, Adam. Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychanalyst. Jewish Lives. Connecticut: Yale UP, 2014.
Print.
Sheppard, Ruth. Explorer of the Mind: The Biography of Sigmund Freud. London: Andre Deutsch Ltd.,
2012. Print.
Steadman, Ralph. Sigmund Freud. Richmond Hill, CA: Firefly, 1997. Print.
Tauber, Alfred I. Freud, the Reluctant Philosopher. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2010. Print.
Wilson, Stephen. Sigmund Freud. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1997. Print.
Zanuso, Billa. The Young Freud. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986. Print.
Freud Criticism
Bettelheim, Bruno. Freud and Man’s Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory. UK,
Vintage Books, 1983. Print.
Breger, Louis. A Dream of Undying Fame: how Freud betrayed his mentor and invented psychoanalysis.
New York: Basic Books, 2009. Print.
Clement, Catherine. The Weary Sons of Freud. London: Verso, 1978. Print.
Dufresne, Todd. Against Freud: Critics talk back. Redwood City, CA: Stanford UP, 2007. Print.
Fine, Reuben. Freud: A critical re-evaluation of his theories. New York: D. McKay Co., 1962. Print.
Fiorini, Leticia and Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, eds. On Freud’s “femininity”. London: Karnac Books, 2010.
Print.
Holowchack, M. Andrew. Freud: from individual psychology to group psychology. Lanham, Md: Jason
Aronson, 2012. Print.
Nicholi, Armand. The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex and the
Meaning of Life. New York: Free Press, 2003. Print.
Rand, Nicholas and Maria Torok. Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 1997. Print.
Rieff, Philip. Freud: the mind of the moralist. New York: Viking Press, 1959. Print.
Roazen, Paul. Freud: political and social thought. New York: aBintage Books, 1970. Print.
Roth, Michael S., ed. Freud: conflict and culture. New York: Vintage books, 2000. Print.
Schur, Max. Freud: Living and Dying. New York: International Universities, 1972. Print.
Stagner, Ross. A History of Psychological Theories. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1988. Print.
Steele, Robert S. Freud and Jung: Conflicts of Interpretation. Ed. Swinney, Susan V. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1982. Print.
Willis, J.H. Jr. Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-41. Charlottesville: UP
of Virginia, 1992. Print.
Museums. Exhibits and Collections
Freud Museum London
Freud Museum: Vienna
The Library of Congress :
- Sigmund Freud Collection
http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/089.html
- Sigmund Freud Exhibit: Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/freud/freudobj.html
The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Archives