Founder of psycho- analysis. Most of the basic concepts of dynamic psychiatry are derived from his theories.
Pioneer in the development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Freud was born in what is now Pribor in the Czech Republic. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873 as a medical student, with growing interests in science and philosophy rather than medical practice. However, falling in love with Martha Bernays and needing an income sufficient to support a family, he changed direction and in 1882 entered the General Hospital of Vienna so that he could qualify and start a private practice. Then followed a period of study in association with a number of eminent physicians, neurologists, and psychiatrists, including Theodor Meynert, Josef Breuer, Ernst Brticke, and Jean- Martin Charcot. In 1895 Freud published, with Breuer, Studies in Hysteria, the first of many groundbreaking books in psychiatry. He was early attracted to HYPNOSIS, but soon moved to analysis by free association. His theories were developed and explained in his many publications, chief among them being The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Totem and Taboo (1913), A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1915—16), and The Ego and the Id (1923). In 1902 Freud invited Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, Rudolph Reitler, and Wilhelm Stekel to meet with him regularly in what became first the Psychological Wednesday Circle, then the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society, and finally the International Psycho-Analytical Association. He formed a close friendship with and was greatly influenced by Wilhelm FLEISS.
For most of his life Freud regarded himself as a materialist and was scornful, for example, of Carl Gustav Jung’s interest in the paranormal. In his later years, however, he became a corresponding member of the society for psychical research, with a particular interest in telepathy. He wrote a paper “Psychoanalysis and Telepathy” in 1921, but was persuaded by his friend and biographer Ernest Jones not to publish (it was not published until after Freud’s death). At that time he was invited to be a coeditor of a psychical journal but declined, saying, “If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to psychical research rather than psychoanalysis.”