Chapter 1

SIGMUND FREUD

AN INTRODUCTION

Sigmund Freud, pioneer of Psychoanalysis, was born on 6th May 1856 in Freiberg to a middle class family. He was born as the eldest child to his father’s second wife. When Freud was four years old, his family shifted and settled in Vienna.

Although Freud’s ambition from childhood was a career in law, he decided to enter the field of medicine. In 1873, at the age of seventeen, Freud enrolled in the university as a medical student. During his days in the university, he did his research on the Central Nervous System under the guidance of German physician `Ernst Wilhelm Von Brucke’. Freud received his medical degree in 1881and later in 1883 he began to work in Vienna General Hospital. Freud spent three years working in various departments of the hospital and in 1885 he left his post at the hospital to join the University of Vienna as a lecturer in Neuropathology.

Following his appointment as a lecturer, he got the opportunity to work under French neurologist Jean Charcot at Salpetriere, the famous Paris hospital for nervous diseases. So far Freud’s work had been entirely concentrated on physical sciences but Charcot’s work, at that time, concentrated more on hysteria and hypnotism. Freud’s studies under Charcot, which centered largely on hysteria, influenced him greatly in channelising his interests to psychopathology.

In 1886, Freud established his private practice in Vienna specializing in nervous diseases and soon afterwards got to his fiancée Martha Bernays, who came from a well-known Jewish family in Hamburg.

In 1888, Freud started using hypnotism in his practice. But, later he dropped it and started using a method, which was being used by Dr. Josef Breuer. The method was based on the assumption that hysteria was a product of psychical trauma, which had been long forgotten by the patient,