FREUD, SIGMUND. – Born in Freiberg (Frzibor) in Moravia on 6 May 1856 to a Jewish merchant family.
After earning his medical degree in Vienna in 1881, where he had pursued his studies, he attended the Institute of Physiology directed by the renowned Brücke. Subsequently, as an assistant in the general hospital, in 1885 he obtained his habilitation in neuropathology. Having secured a scholarship to Paris, he took particular interest in the lectures of J. M. Charcot at the Salpêtrière on hysterics and the effects of suggestion.
Returning to Vienna in 1886, he was entrusted by M. Krusowitz with the direction of a pediatric ward for nervous diseases, and at this time he traveled to Nancy to observe the hypnotic experiments of H. Bernheim. Established in private practice, he became interested in and collaborated on the research and particular therapeutic method employed by the Viennese physician Josef Breuer, who since 1881 had applied a method (the so-called “cathartic” method) of recollection in a state of suggestion to an hysterical patient. From this therapeutic technique, which he later applied to the same patient and which resulted in the cure of hysterical symptoms, Freud derived the first seeds of the theory and therapeutic applications of psychoanalysis (v.). In 1893, together with Breuer, he published studies on the psychic mechanisms of hysterical phenomena, upholding Charcot’s thesis that neuroses originate from psychic traumas, traumas which Freud admitted were of a purely sexual nature. After definitively separating from his collaborator, he resolutely pursued his own psychoanalytic path, replacing the method of recollection in a state of suggestion of incriminated psychological complexes with that of free and spontaneous associations, which he considered less fallible. Along this path, in 1906 a small group of disciples followed him, growing rapidly captivated by the novelty of his approach to the study and treatment of psychoneurotic disorders and by Freud’s brilliant exposition; thus was born the first psychoanalytic school. Already appointed extraordinary professor in 1902, in 1920 he was granted the title of ordinary professor, a sign of his victory and the recognition of his doctrine by the hitherto hostile official scientific circles; in 1930 his illustrious ascent was crowned by the award of the Goethe Prize of the city of Frankfurt. He visited Italy several times, taking an interest in archaeology, art, and Renaissance history, seeking to draw from these fields facts and arguments in support of his theories.
At the height of his fame and at the moment when his theory, crossing the borders of his homeland, rapidly spread beyond the limits of medicine into literature, pedagogy, practical life, and the religious and social spheres, he was swept up in the anti-Jewish persecution unleashed by Nazism. After the Anschluss, in June 1938, he was forced to leave Vienna, taking refuge in London with his wife and children. There, as the world began to descend into world war, he died on 23 September 1939 at the age of eighty-three.
His theories are developed in numerous works; see PSICOANALISI.