Sigmund Freud (redirected from Siegmund Freud)

Freud, Sigmund 

Born May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Austria-Hungary, now Příbor, Czechoslovakia; died Sept. 23, 1939, in Hampstead, near London. Austrian neuropathologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist. Founder of psychoanalysis.

Freud studied medicine at the University of Vienna, where he received his M. D. in 1881. From 1876 to 1882 he worked under E. Brücke in the Vienna Institute of Physiology; there Freud became acquainted with the ideas of H. von Helmholtz, whose views on energy he later applied to psychology. In 1885–86, Freud worked under J. Charcot in the Salpětrière Hospital in Paris. He was a professor at the University of Vienna from 1902. In 1908, together with E. Bleuler and C. G. Jung, Freud founded a yearbook of psychoanalytical and psychopathological research, and in 1910 he founded the International Psychoanalytical Association. He was awarded the Goethe Prize in 1930. After fascist Germany’s seizure of Austria in 1938, Freud emigrated to Great Britain.

Freud’s early works were devoted to the aphasias (1891), infantile paralysis (1891–97), and the physiology and anatomy of the brain, including the localization of brain functions. He was one of the first to discover, in 1884, the pain-relieving effect of cocaine; this discovery stimulated research on the use of local anesthesia—as applied, for example, by the Viennese ophthalmologist C. Keller. In the early 1890’s, under the influence of the French school of psychotherapy (Charcot and Bernheim), Freud began to study the neuroses—and especially hysteria—as diseases that had no apparent organic substratum. He also studied psychiatric treatment methods and their psychological bases. Together with J. Breuer, Freud studied the psychological mechanisms of hysteria, and he proposed the cathartic method of psychotherapy, based on abreaction—that is, the release of unconscious traumatic experiences under hypnosis.

In 1895, Freud began to work on the treatment of neuroses by the psychoanalytic method, based on the technique of free association and the analysis of errors and dreams as a way of penetrating into the unconscious. Freud was among the first to investigate the psychological aspects of sexuality. He viewed sexual development as consisting of several qualitatively different stages, each being the potential source of unconscious conflicts that are manifested in such forms as neuroses or perversions. According to Freud’s general theory of psychology, proposed by him in the early 1900’s, the structure of the psyche may be compared to an energy system; underlying this system is the conflict between different psychic levels—primarily between consciousness and the elemental unconscious drives.

In a mistaken attempt to broaden the sphere of application of psychoanalysis, Freud sought to extend its principles to such areas of human culture as mythology (Totem and Taboo, 1913; Russian translation, 1923), folklore, and the creative arts; he even explained religion as a special form of collective neurosis (The Future of an Illusion, 1927; Russian translation, 1930). Freud’s views, considered in their overall ideological development, evolved from “physiological materialism” and the mechanism of the Helmholtz school to the assertion of psychic autonomy and to anthropological constructs that are akin to naturalistic variants of the philosophy of life. The influence of Freud’s ideas ranges over a very broad spectrum of thought in bourgeois philosophy and sociology.

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–18. Stuttgart, 1966–69.
In Russian translation:
Psikhopatologiia obydennoi zhizni. Moscow, 1910.
Tri stat’i o teorii polovogo vlecheniia. Moscow, 1911.
Tolkovaniesnovidenii. Moscow, 1913.
Lektsiipo vvedeniiu v psikhoanaliz, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1922.
Osnovnye psikhologicheskie teorii v psikhoanalize. Moscow-Petrograd, 1923.
Ocherki po psikhologii seksual’nosti. Moscow-Petrograd [no date].
Ostroumie i ego otnoshenie k bessoznatel’nomu. Moscow, 1925.
Izbrannoe, vol. 1. London, 1969.

REFERENCES

Wittels, F. Freid: Ego lichnost’, uchenie i shkola. Leningrad, 1925. (Translated from German.)
Zweig, S. Sobr. soch., vol. 11. Leningrad, 1932.
Wells, H. K. Pavlov i Freid. Moscow, 1959. (Translated from English.)
Jones, E. The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, vols. 1–3. New York, 1953–57.

A. V. BRUENOK and D. N. LIALIKOV