Sigmund Freud
Neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis. He wrote about dreams and the unconscious mind, including in The Interpretation of Dreams.
3 summaries 43 min of listening
Austrian Born 1856 in Příbor, Czech Republic Died 1939
Influenced by Plato
About Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg in Moravia and spent most of his life in Vienna. He began studying medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873, and later studied for a time under the neurologist Jean Charcot in Paris. In 1886 he opened a private practice in Vienna, treating nervous and brain disorders. Freud developed the theory that the unconscious holds sexual and aggressive impulses that are in constant conflict with the defences set against them. His major work The Interpretation of Dreams appeared in 1900. The Ego and the Id, published in 1923, set out a model of the mind split into id, ego and superego. He was a professor at the University of Vienna from 1902 to 1938. After the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London in 1938, and he died there on 23 September 1939.