Published by admin at 5:37 am under Example Essays
Sigmund Freud, a physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis, is generally recognized as one of the most influential and authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century. Freud’s most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a new science of the mind, however, remains the subject of much critical debate and controversy.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia. His father was a wool merchant and his mother was a lively woman, who was twenty years younger than his father and also his second wife. Sigmund was his mother first child of seven and he had two older half brothers. At the age of four, his family moved to Vienna where he lived most of his life.
Sigmund was a brilliant child and eventually went to medical school – which was one of the more viable choices for a Jewish boy in Vienna. He became involved in research under the direction of a physiology professor – Ernst Brucke. Brucke believed in reductionism: “ No other forces that the common physical – chemical ones are active within the organism”. Freud would later spend many years on trying to “reduce” personality to neurology, something he would eventually give up.
Freud was very successful with his research, especially neurophysiology, and invented a special cell staining technique. While he was successful with what he had accomplished, there were limited available positions available and Brucke helped him receive a grant to enable his to study with the great psychiatrist in Charcot in Paris and then late his rival Bernheim in Nancy. Both studied the use of hypnosis with hysterics.
After spending a short time as a resident in neurology in Berlin, he returned home to his fiancee, Martha Bernays, and set up a small practice in neuropsychiatry with the help of Joseph Breuer.
Freud’s books and lectures brought him both fame and