Sigmund Freud

FREUD, Sigmund (Siegmund Freud; born 1856), founder of psychoanalysis. He received his medical education at the University of Vienna, where he initially took a keen interest in physiology and while still a student was a demonstrator under Brücke. A man of great ambition who sought a wide field of activity, Freud did not immediately choose a specialty upon graduating from the university. One of his early works was devoted to the study of the anesthetic action of cocaine, with Freud's conclusions being utilized by Koller, who was the first to give cocaine practical application in ophthalmology. Soon Freud chose neuropathology as his specialty and worked in Vienna under the guidance of Meynert on the anatomy of the central nervous system. Not finding satisfaction in this work, he went to Paris to Charcot, under whose influence he began to take an interest in the psychic mechanisms of hysterical phenomena. Upon returning to Vienna, still not daring to break with Meynert's direction, he wrote a work on aphasia, after which he finally lost interest in questions of organic nervous diseases. In 1893, Freud, together with Breuer, published the book «On Hysteria», which became the starting point for the development of psychoanalytic doctrine. The book is devoted to a detailed analysis of a single case where the authors, by means of catharsis, succeeded in uncovering a number of mechanisms for the emergence of psychopathological phenomena that later played an important role in psychoanalytic interpretations. Having soon parted ways with Breuer, Freud first wrote a series of brilliant sketches, later collected in the book «The Psychopathology of Everyday Life», and then in 1901 published the major book «The Interpretation of Dreams», where he essentially deployed his theory on the role of sexual experiences in psychic life and the doctrine of the unconscious. Freud's sexual theory was soon set forth by him separately in a work published under the title «Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality» (1905), and numerous examples illustrating the doctrine are given in sketches on the theory of neuroses published at the same time. Very soon, a circle of talented pupils and followers grouped around Freud (Abraham, Adler, Bleuler, Jung, and others), most of whom, however, later parted ways with the teacher, who demanded unconditional faith in his theories and did not tolerate contradictions. In 1908, Freud already succeeded in gathering the first international psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg, which marked the beginning of a whole series of such congresses that have been regularly assembled ever since. At the same time, the International Psychoanalytic Association and a publishing house of the same name were founded. From this time on, Freud's ideas gained wide popularity, although they met with sharp resistance from representatives of official neuropathology and psychiatry. During the war years, Freud delivered several systematic courses on psychoanalysis in America, which he combined into the three-volume «Introduction to Psychoanalysis», containing a systematic exposition of his doctrine. After the war, Freud largely departed from medical interests, turning to the philosophical treatment of a number of biological, psychological, and general cultural questions («Beyond the Pleasure Principle», «Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego», «The Ego and the Id», «Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety», etc.) in the spirit of the reactionary-idealist views of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer (see also Psychoanalysis).