Sigmund Freud

Who is Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis, was born on May 6, 1856 in a middle class family in Freiburg (Moravia). When Freud was 4 years old his family moved to Víena.

In 1865 Freud began his secondary studies, which curiously began a year earlier than it was the usual age at that time, and ended with an excellent rating (Summa Cum Laude). Then he began Medicine at the University of Víena.

Already as a student, Sigmund Freud entered the physiological laboratory of Bruecke where he began his research career, centered in those early years in Neurology. Parallely Freud began their publications.

In 1884, Sigmund Freud investigated the anesthetic properties of the cocaine, substance that at that time in Europe was little known. At the same time his friend Carl Koller demonstrated the anesthetic properties of cocaine in Ophthalmology.
Shortly after (1884) Freud entered like professor in University of Víena.
In 1885 he received a scholarship to go to Paris to study with the famous Jean Martin Charcot at the “Hospital de la Salpêtrière“. At that time this French doctor studied the possibilities of hypnosis as a treatment of Hysteria.

After returning from France, Sigmund Freud marched to the Kassowitz Institute in Berlin where he studied the cerebral palsies of children.

Later on, in 1889, Sigmund Freud traveled to Nancy (France) to see how Liébault M.D. and Bernheim M.D. used hypnotic suggestion as a therapeutic technique, not only for Hysteria but also for other neurotic disorders.

His biographer Ernest Jones tells us that Sigmund Freud was a family man, a lover of his profession and a tireless worker.
Freud was a very cultured man who spoke French and English perfectly, as well as Spanish,  which he had learned reading “Don Quixote” in the language of Cervantes. During his youth he also translated several works by Charcot and Bernheim into German.
Sigmund Freud was a great lover of the work of Goethe and Shakespeare, as well as the Greco-Roman culture.

When he reached fame and glory, he was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw and palate against which he fought for 16 years, in the course of which Dr. Pichler performed a total of thirty-three operations under local anesthesia, in addition to radiation. The last ones were so bloody that he agreed, at the insistence of hes doctor, to administer an analgesic called Novocaine. He had previously refused to take painkillers, despite the intense pains he suffered. One of those operations was so drastic that the nasal cavity was communicated with his mouth, so he had to use a jaw and palate prosthesis.
Ernest Jones says in his biography that “he was a perfect patient … Whatever the degree of suffering, there was never a hint of irritability or annoyance in him“.

The University of Clark in the United States invited Sigmund Freud to give a series of lectures

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