and leader. Later, many members of the society would come to disagree with
Freud and leave the ranks to develop their own personality theories and form
their own professional organizations. However, as later chapters will reveal,the flavor of their theories remained unmistakably Freudian.
Sigmund Freud
1856 –1939
Sigmund Freud was born in
1856 in Freiberg, Moravia(now part of the CzechRepublic). In 1860 hisfamily moved to Vienna,
where Freud spent virtuallythe rest of his life. Freud ’s
ambition to amount to
something important surfaced early. He enrolled inmedical school at the University of Vienna determinedto make an important discovery and thereby a name forhimself.
Freud began his quest while working in his
instructor ’s medical laboratory. But immediate scientific
breakthroughs were not forthcoming, and he soon
became discouraged at his chances for advancement. Inaddition, he had fallen in love with Martha Bernays andwanted to earn enough money to marry her and give her
a comfortable lifestyle. So, upon completing his degree,
Freud left the lab and went into private practice.
During his subsequent 4-year engagement to
Bernays (they were finally married in 1886), Freud won aresearch grant to travel to Paris to observe Jean-MartinCharcot ’s work with hypnosis. It was during this time
that he began to develop his ideas about the power of theunconscious mind. His work with Joseph Breuer,observations of his own patients, and a great deal ofintrospection led to his 1900 book The Interpretation of
Dreams . Although it took several years to sell the 600
original printings, the book ’s publication was the first
step toward achieving the widespread recognition Freudhad sought back in medical school.
Something about Sigmund Freud has attracted the
attention of numerous biographers. The most completeof these is the three-volume biography by Ernest Jones(1953 –1957). Although he sought fame, in many ways
Freud was a private person. Consequently, mostbiographers have glued together the facts we haveabout Freud ’s life with a large amount of speculation.Perhaps the most interesting part of this speculation
concerns the extent to which Freud ’s description of
human personality reflects his own personality and lifeexperiences. Not surprisingly, Freud ’s relationship with
his parents is of particular interest. Although his father
had several children from an earlier marriage, Sigmundwas his mother ’s first child and apparently the apple of
her eye. His mother was only 21 when he was born andalmost as close in age to her son as she was to herhusband. Biographers agree that an especially closerelationship was formed. Freud ’s mother sometimes
referred to him as her “Golden Sigi. ”In contrast,
Freud ’s relationship with his father appears to have
been cold, if not occasionally hostile. Freud arrived lateto his father ’s funeral, something he later identified as
clearly unconsciously motivated. Freud struggled with
guilt feelings over his relationship with his father manyyears after his father ’s death.
It is not difficult to see how Freud ’s description of
the Oedipus complex— sexual attraction for the mother
and competitive hostility toward the father —may have
been a kind of projection of his own feelings toward hisparents. Freud hints at this insight at many places in hiswritings. Indeed, he often relied on his ownintrospection to test the accuracy of his clinicalintuition. He is reported to have reserved a half houreach night for this self-analysis.
Freud ’s marriage was a long and relatively happy
one, producing six children. The youngest child, Anna,held a special place in her father ’s heart. She followed
in his professional footsteps, eventually taking over aleadership role in the psychoanalytic movement andbecoming a respected psychoanalytic theorist in herown right. Freud created a situation filled withinteresting Oedipal possibilities when he conductedAnna ’s psychoanalysis himself.
Freud and his family fled from their home and Nazi
persecution when Germany invaded Austria in 1938.They escaped to London, where Freud died of cancerthe following year.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Historical/CORBIS42 CHAPTER 3 The Psychoanalyt ic Approach