Dr.

Sigmund Freud

6 May 1856
23 September 1939

Born in Freiburg in Moravia

View of Freiburg

Freuds birthplace

Freud and his father,

Freuds mother,
Amalia

Early Life

1859: Moves to Leipzig

1860: Moves to Vienna
3 brothers and 5 sisters
1865: Enters Leopoldstter Real-und Obergymnasium,
where he is a brilliant student from the outset
1873: Graduates by passing his exams most impressively
1876: Wins a research grant
1877: Joins Ernst Brcke, German physiologist teaching at
the University of Vienna
1881: Obtains his medical degree

Jacob Freuds family, Vienna, 1878

Trains at Vienna General Hospital, 1582-1585

1885-1886
Studies in France with French
neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot
They work at the mental hospital, the
Salptrire
1886: Returns via Berlin, where he
studies childrens diseases
Opens private practice
Marries Martha Bernays

Jean Martin Charcot

Charcot, La Leon

Engagement picture; Martha

Bernays

1887-1900

1877: Mathilde born

1877: Meets Wilhelm Fliess
1888: Begins to publish papers
1889: Jean-Martin born
1891: Oliver born
1893: Sophie born
1893: The Alfred Dreyfus affair
1895: Anna born
1895: Studies on Hysteria, with Breuer
1896: The word psychoanalysis appears in
print for the first time
1899/1900: The Interpretation of Dreams

Wilhelm Fliess

Josef Breuer

Studies on Hysteria,
1895

psychoa'nalysis. Also with hyphen and (rare) as psychanalysis.

[ad. F. psychoanalyse (S. Freud 1896, in Rev. Neurologique IV.
166):
see psycho- and analysis.
Freud earlier used psychische analyse and klinischpsychologische
analyse
(Neurol. Centralbl. (1894) XIII. 364).]
a. A therapeutic method originated by Freud for treating disorders
of the
personality or behaviour by bringing into a patients
consciousness his
unconscious conflicts and fantasies (which are attributed
chiefly to the
development of the sexual instinct) through the free
association of ideas,
analysis and interpretation of dreams and parapraxes, etc.,
and allowing
him to
reliveDictionary
them by transference.
Oxford
English
b. A theory of personality and psychical life derived from this,
based on
concepts of the ego, id, and super-ego, the conscious, pre-

The Interpretation
of Dreams, 1899/1900

1901-1910

1901/1904: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

1902: Founds the Psychological Wednesday Society
1905: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
1905: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
1907: Jung first visits Freuds home
1908: First International Congress of Psychoanalysts
1909: Little Hans, Rat Man
1910: Publishes more papers

The Psychopathology
Of Everyday Life,
1901

Three Essays on the

Theory of Sexuality,
1905

Karl Jung

International Congress of Psychoanalysts, 1911

1912-1918

1912: Founds Imago

1912:Founds International Journal for Medical Psychoanalysis
1912: Break with Jung
1914: 28 June, Austrias Archduke Ferdinand and his consort
are assassinated at Sarajevo
23 July: Austria issues ultimatum to Serbia; war follows
4 August: War becomes general.
Freuds 3 sons volunteer for the army
Late in the year Freuds early patriotic enthusiasm slowly
wanes as he watches the general slaughter with increasing
gloom.
1915: Publishes many papers
1918: War Ends: they stay in Vienna, cold and hungry
1918: Wolf Man

[War] strips us of the later accretions of civilization, and lays bare the
primal man ine ach of us. It compels us once more to be heroes who
cannot believe in their own death; it stamps strangers as enemies, whose
death is to be brought about or desired; it tells us to disregard the death
of those we love. Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, 1915

Freud with sons, Ernest, left,

and Martin, right.
Salzburg, August 1916

The Psyhchoanalysis of
War Neuroses, 1919

Trench warfare, WWI

1920-1929
1920: Daughter Sophie dies in the influenza
epidemic
1920: Beyond the Pleasure Principle
1921: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
1923: The Ego and the Id
1923: First operation on his jaw and palate (cancer)
1925: Daughter Anna goes to the Conventions
1926: Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
1927: Riots and general strike in Vienna
1927: The Future of an Illusion
1929: Completes Civilization and Its Discontents
1929: Stock market crash in New York, October

1930-1936
1930: Freud is awarded the prestigious Goethe prize
1930: 14 September: Nazis elected to the German Reichstag.
Nazis becoming powerful in Austria
1931: Threatened collapse of the Austrian Credit-Anstalt, once
very powerful.
1932: Einstein and Freud correspond; their letters are
published together as Why War in March 1933
1932: New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
1933: Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany and launches
Nazi Regime
1933, 10 May: Book burnings at Berlins Opernplatz; Freuds
writings are included
1934, 25 July: Attempted Nazi coup fails, but Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss is murdered. Kurt Schuschnigg takes over
1935: Austria repeals anti-Habsburg laws
1936: Freuds cancer returns; he undergoes major operation

Why War?
Correspondence at the
instance of the League
of Nations,on the possible
prevention of war,
published March 1933

Nazi book burnings at Berlins Opernplatz,

10 May 1933

1938
Freud refuses to believe that Nazis will invade
12 February: Schuschnigg visits Hitler
9 March: Schuschnigg announces a plebiscite on
Austrian independence
11 March: German ultimatum to Austria. Schuschnigg
resigns. The Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart becomes
Chancellor.
11 March: Freud enters into his diary: Finis Austriae
12 March: Anschluss with Germany proclaimed
13 March: Hitler in Vienna
22 March: Anna Freud summoned to the Gestapo,
then released
4 June: Freud, his wife, and Anna take train to Paris
6 June: They go to London. Moses and Monotheism
9-10 November: Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany

Freud and his daughter

Anna, 1916

1939

Freuds cancer returns. It is inoperable

Freud closes his practice
1 September: Germans invade Poland
3 September: Britain and France declare war
21 September: Freud is given injections of
morphine by his physician, Max Schur
23 September: Freud dies at 3 a.m.

Freuds house in
London

A Simplified Outline of Freuds Ideas

Like the work of many other important
thinkers, Freuds work is complex and not
fully consistent. His thinking evolved over the
course of 50 years, and he often changed or
rejected parts of his earlier thinking.
Moreover, many later parts of his work, when
he was old and mortally ill, were expressed
quite schematically. What follows is therefore
a summary of major points, which, inevitably,
skips over some of the finer points.
Broadly speaking, Freuds work traces the
relationship among a number of different
systems or structures of the human psyche.
The elements include:

The elements of the psyche:

The Id
The Ego
The Superego

The areas of the mind:

The Unconscious
The Preconscious
The Conscious

The fundamental instinctive

drives
Eros
Thanatos

An adaptive model of the individuals

relationship with the world, comprising
The Pleasure Principle
The Reality Principle

A model of the individuals developmental

cycle, comprising the following phases:

Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latent
Genital

These Systems
Are related
Are ontogenetic (part of a developmental sequence
of the organism
Undergo constant change in the normal life of an
individual
All Freuds assumptions posit a developmental
history of the individual based on:
The interaction of the contingent history of the individual
with the
Structured history of the various developmental forces
and sequences

The individual is, at the least dialectically formed

The Id

At birth the individual is psychically not fully formed

A totally unconscious mass of instinctive desires
The individual is unaware that she or he is one
The child assumes that it is the world, complete and selfsufficient.
The child has no real awareness of self
The child is a bundle of drives seeking to fulfill the pleasure
principle
All its actions are pure manifestations of the two major
drives EROS and THANATOS, though at this stage EROS
seems completely dominant
The child is thus totally driven to seek pleasure; it is a
collection of wants in search of immediate satisfaction
The primary satisfaction it seeks is through its oral area, by
putting things in its mouth