Sigmund Freud - biographical facts

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist and originator of psychoanalysis, born of Jewish parents in Freiburg, Moravia. Brought to Vienna at the age of four, he remained there—except for brief intervals devoted to study, lecturing, and conferences elsewhere—until 1938. That year, Freud, by then in his 80's, moved to London, the Nazis having annexed Austria as part of the Third Reich and confiscated most of Freud's belongings. He might have been placed in a concentration camp or killed had not the intercession of prominent persons in England, France, and the United States enabled him to leave Nazi territory.

Having graduated from the medical school at the University of Vienna, studied physiology at Vienna's General Hospital, and shared in the discovery of the anesthetic properties of cocaine, Freud might have devoted his life to the practice of medicine if he had not come under the influence of Charcot, the great French neuropsychiatrist. Returning to Vienna in 1886 after a year's study under Charcot at the Salpétriére Hospital in Paris, he became a
general practitioner of medicine but specialized in neuropathology. Shortly thereafter he became greatly interested in a case of hysteria in a young girl being treated by Josef Breuer. The temporary relief effected through catharsis, or hypnotizing the girl and persuading her while under hypnosis to recall the circumstances under which her symptoms of hysteria originated, impressed Freud tremendously. It led Freud to investigate and think through closely the problem of hysteria, and in 1895, in collaboration with Breuer, he published in German a book which years later was brought out in English under the title Selected Papers on Hysteria.
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