Sigmund Freud Biography 1856-1939 he was the Founder of psychoanalysis
• Austrian physician, neurologist, psychologist
• Born in Moravia (Czech Republic) in a middle class family
• Studied at Vienna University where he became interested in neurological research
• Spent three years at General Hospital Vienna and worked in nervous diseases, psychiatry, and dermatology
• 1885: Became professor of neuropathology at Vienna University
• 1885: Following a government grant went to Paris as a student of French neurologist Jean
Charcot, who was treating nervous diseases through hypnotic suggestion
• Freud’s interest in psychopathology was heightened as a result of his studies of hysteria, under Charcot
• 1886: Established private practice in Vienna specializing in nervous disease. His interest shifted from physiological to psychological explanation of psychopathology
• Started collaborative work with Josef Breuer
• 1895: wrote “Studies on Hysteria”; main emphasis was that uncharged emotional energy associated with forgotten psychic traumas resulted into hysterical symptoms
• Therapy, at that stage, involved putting the patient in a hypnotic state, where he recalled and reenacted the traumatic experience = Catharsis
• Hence the formal beginning of Psychoanalysis
