| Sigmund Freud |
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Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was a Jewish-Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry.[1] Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient, technically referred to as an "analysand", and a psychoanalyst. Freud is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life, as well as for his therapeutic techniques, including the use of free association, his theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship, and the interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.
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Early life
Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galician[2] parents in the Moravian town of Pribor, Austrian Empire, which is now part of the Czech Republic. Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen.
His father, Jakob, was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother, Amalie (nee Nathansohn), the second wife of Jakob, was 21. He was the first of their eight children and, owing to his precocious intellect, his parents favored him over his siblings, from the early stages of his childhood. Despite their poverty, they sacrificed everything to give him a proper education. Due to the economic crisis of 1857, Freud's father lost his business, and the family moved to Leipzig before settling in Vienna.
Freud and psychoanalysis
In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a traveling fellowship to study with Europe's most renowned neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot. He was later to remember the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in research neurology. Charcot specialised in the study of hysteria and its susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Freud later turned away from hypnosis as a potential cure, favouring free association (psychology) and dream analysis. Charcot himself questioned his own work on hysteria towards the end of his life.
After opening his own medical practice, specializing in neurology, Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886. Her father Berman was the son of Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi in Hamburg.
Last years and escape from Austria
In 1932, Freud received the Goethe Prize in appreciation of his contribution to psychology and to German literary culture. One year later (on 30 January 1933), the Nazis took control of Germany, and Freud's books were prominent among those burned and destroyed by the Nazis. Freud quipped:
“ What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ”
At that time, he could not have foreseen that all of his many sisters would perish in The Holocaust.
Freud's ideas
Freud has been influential in two related but distinct ways: He simultaneously developed a theory of how the human mind is organized and operates internally, and a theory of how human behavior both conditions and results from this particular theoretical understanding. This led him to favor certain clinical techniques for trying to help cure psychopathology. He theorized that personality is developed by the person's childhood experiences.
Cocaine
As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug and he was influenced by his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis". Fliess operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients' noses whom he believed to be suffering from the disorder, including Emma Eckstein, whose surgery proved disastrous.
Psychotherapy
Freud's theories and research methods have always been controversial. He and psychoanalysis have been criticized in very extreme terms. For an often-quoted example, Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, said in 1975 that psychoanalysis is the "most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century". However, Freud has had a tremendous impact on psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists follow Freud's approach to an extent, even if they reject his theories.
References - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
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