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Sigmund Freud
1856 – 1939
Sigmund Freud – founder of direction, which became known under the name of depth psychology and psychoanalysis,was born on May 6, 1856 in the small Moravian town of Freiburg (now Příbor) in a poor family of fur trader. In 1860 the family moved to Vienna, where the future brilliant scientist lived about 80 years of his life. In the large family were 8 children, but only Sigmund was distinguished by his exceptional abilities, with extremely sharp mind and a passion for reading. Therefore, parents have sought to create for him the best conditions. If other children were learning lessons by candlelight, Sigmund was highlighted by the kerosene lamp. Nobody could disturb him from learning. He graduated the high school with honors at the age of 17 and was enrolled in the famous University of Vienna, faculty of medicine.
Vienna was then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its cultural and intellectual center. The university had distinguished teaching professor. While studying at the university, Freud entered the student union to study the history, politics, and philosophy (this further affected its concepts about culture). But a particular interest for him represented the natural sciences, whose achievements made in the middle of the last century, revolution in minds, laying the foundations of modern knowledge about the body of nature. In the great discoveries of this era – the energy conservation law and the established law of evolution of Darwin in the organic world – drew Freud’s belief that scientific knowledge is knowledge of the causes of the phenomena under strict control experience. Freud relied on both laws, when he proceeds later to the study of human behavior. The body he represented as a kind of apparatus, a charged energy that is discharged either in normal or in pathological reactions. In contrast to the physical devices, the body is a product of the evolution of the human race and life of the individual. It was also seen, first, from the standpoint of energy resource of the person, the employees “fuel” of its actions and feelings, and secondly, from the perspective of the development of the personality that carries the memory of her childhood and of all mankind, and about his own childhood. Freud, therefore, brought up on the principles and ideal precisions, experimental science – physics and biology. It is not limited to the description of phenomena, and searching for their causes and laws (such an approach known as determinism and in all subsequent work of Freud was a determinist). These ideals he followed later when he moved to the area of psychology. His teacher was the outstanding European physiologist – Ernst Brücke. Under his leadership, the student, Freud worked in Vienna at physiological institute, sitting for long hours over the microscope. Under the old age, being internationally recognized psychologist, he wrote to one of his friends that he had never been as happy as during the years spent in the laboratory to study the device of the nerve cells of the spinal cord of animals. The ability to work with concentration, giving himself entirely to scientific pursuits, worked out in this period, Freud maintained for the next decade. He intended to become professional scientists. But Brücke hadn’t any vacant seat at the physiological institute. Meanwhile, the financial situation deteriorated Freud. The difficulties were aggravated by the forthcoming marriage to the same poor, as he, Martha True. He had to leave science and seek for a livelihood. There was one way out – to become a medical practitioner, although this profession, he didnotfeel any gravity. He decided to take up private practice as a neurologist. Do to this he had to first go to work at the clinic because he hadn’t any medical experience. At the hospital, Freud thoroughly develops methods of diagnosis and treatment of children with brain damage (patients with infantile paralysis), as well as various speech disorders (aphasia). His publications on this are well known in the scientific and medical circles. Freud was gaining a reputation as a highly qualified neurologist. His patients he treated at the time accepted methods of physiotherapy. It wasbelieved that since the nervous system is a material body, then the painful changes that take place there must betangible reasons. Therefore, they should be addressed through physical processes, influencing the patient’s heat, water, electricity, etc. Very soon, however, Freud became dissatisfied of these physiotherapeutic procedures. Theeffectiveness of treatment left much to be desired, and he pondered the possibility to use other methods, such as hypnosis, which some doctors were using have achieved good results. One of such successful practitioners was Josef Breuer, who became the patron of all the young Freud (1884). Together they discussed the causes of diseases of their patients and prospects for treatment. Patients, who addressed to them, were mostly women, who suffered of hysteria. The disease manifested itself in various symptoms – fear (phobias), loss of sensitivity, aversion to food, a split personality, hallucinations, spasms, etc.
Applying a light hypnosis (suggestion condition, like sleep), Breuer and Freud asked patients to talk about events that once accompanied the appearance of symptoms. Turned out that when the patients could remember about it and “reprimand” it, the symptoms at least temporarily disappeared. This effect Breuer called the ancient Greek word “catharsis” (purification). Ancient philosophers used this word to denote feelings caused by the human perception of works of art (music, tragedy). It was assumed that these products purify the soul from the hides of its passions, thereby bringing “harmless pleasure.” Breuer has shifted this term from aesthetics to psychotherapy. Behind the notion of catharsis was concealed the hypothesis that symptoms arise from the fact that the patient first experienced the intense, emotionally colored attraction to any action. Symptoms (fears, cramps, etc.) are symbolically replace this unrealized, but the desired effect. The energy of attraction is discharged in a perverted form, as it were “stuck” in the bodies, which sometimes operate abnormally. Therefore, it was assumed that the main task of the doctor – to get the patient to relive the repressed desire and thus make energy (nervous and mental energy) a different direction – namely, to translate it into the path of catharsis, to defuse a depressed appetite in the story of a doctor about it. In this version of the traumatic patient, repressed by consciousness, emotionally colored memories, get rid of them gives a therapeutic effect (disappear movement disorder restored sensitivity, etc.), contained the germ of the future of Freud’s psychoanalysis. First of all, in these clinical studies “erupted” idea, this has consistently returned to Freud. Theforeground is clearly made by the conflicting relations between the conscious and unconscious, but which violate the normal course of conduct of mental states. The fact that the threshold of consciousness crowded past experiences, memories, ideas, able to influence his work has long been known to philosophers and psychologists. New aspects on which lingered thoughtBreuer and Freud were, first, the resistance, which renders the consciousness of theunconscious, with the result that there are diseases of the feelings and movements (up to a temporary paralysis),and secondly, the treatment to the means remove this resistance, at first – to hypnosis, and then – to the so-called “free association”, which will be discussed further. Hypnosis mind control weakened, and sometimes just shot him. This facilitated the hypnotized patient solution, which Breuer and Freud put, – “pour soul in the story of repressed from consciousness experiences.
