Biographies: Sigmund Freud (Austria, 1856-1939)


Figure 1.--Here we see Sigmund with his fther. Sigmund looks to be bout 9-10 years old so the portrait would have been taken bout 1865-66. He wears a plain cut-away jacket suit with long pants. This was about tghe time he began at the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium. This was a prestigious academically orinted secondary school and he quickly began impressing his teachers. "

Sigmund Schlomo Freud was an Austrian doctor specializing in neurology who became the towering figure is psychology, founding psychoanalysis. This was a clinical method for treating psychopathology using dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician (Austrian Poland) Jewish parents in the Moravian (Czech) town of Freiberg, then part of the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna (1881). After completing his habilitation (university qualification to conduct self-contained teaching) (1885), he was appointed a docent in neuropathology. He set up a clinical practice there achiueving some renoun (1886). He became an affiliated professor (1902). Freud conducted his professional and family life in Vienna. Freud is best known for inventing psychoanalysis. He developed therapeutic techniques such as free association and discovered transference. These methods became central to the analytic process. Freud focus much of his work on sexuality. At the time his ideas on infantile forms led to great controversy. He formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. While Freud was non-religious, his Jewish ancestry and controversy concerning his wirk made him a NAZI target. Freud late in life had to leave his beloved Vienna to escape the NAZIs (1938). He died in exile in the United Kingdom (1939).

Family

Freud's family were Galician (Austrian Poland) Jews. The area was seized by the Sioviets during World War II and today is part of Ukraine. Sigmund's father was Jakob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel (1833–1914) and Philipp (1836–1911) by his first marriage. Jakob's family were Hasidic Jews. Jakob moved away from Hasidism, but not Judaism. He was a liberal Jew known for Torah study. Jakob had three wives. Freud grew up with older half brothers and their children as well as younger brothers and sisters. Freud's mother, Amalia Nathansohn, was his father's third wife and 20 years younger. They were marriued by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer (1855). They struggled financially and living in a small rented room, in a locksmith's house where Sigmund was born (1856).

Childhood

Sigmund Schlomo Freud was born in Freiberg in the Czech Lands, then part of the Austrian Empire (1856). He was born with a caul/cowl which his mother who was a little supertitios saw as a positive omen for the her son's future. We do not know much about Freud's childhood. When he was 4 years old his family moved to seek better oprospects (1859). And it would be Vienna where he live and worked until the last year of his life where he was forced out by the NAZIs (1938). We do not know much about his childhood, but Sigmund was very close to his half brother Emanuel's son, John. His half brothers would emigrate to Manchester, England, parting him from John. Sigmund's sister, Anna, was born (1858). A brother Julius had been born (1857), but ied in infancy). Jakob first took the family to Leipzig, but finslly decided on Vienna (1860). There in Vienna four sisters and a brother were born. His immediate family with Jakob and Amalia Nathansohn were: Rosa (1860), Marie (1861), Adolfine (1862), Paula (1864), and finally Alexander (1866).

Education

Sigmund at 9 year of age the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prestigious and demsnding secondaty school. He quickly established himself as an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura with honors (1873). He was especially fond of literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Freud enrolled at the medical school at the University of Vienna (1873). He had planned to study law, but decided to join the medical school instead. He studied philosophy under Franz Brentano, physiology under Ernst Brücke, and zoology under Darwinist professor Carl Claus.[ It was Brücke who prived the most influential. He did research in physiology under the great German scientist Ernst Brücke (1873-079). Brücke was the director of the Physiology Laboratory at the University. Freud then began shifting to neurology as a specialty. He was awarded his medical degree (1881). As he had been engaged to be married (1882), he reluctantly decided to practice medicine at the Vienna General Hospital. This was more financially rewarding than research for a young family man.

Professional Work

He qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna (1881). After completing his habilitation (university qualification to conduct self-contained teaching) (1885), he was appointed a docent in neuropathology. He set up a clinical practice there achieving some renoun (1886). He was a doctor specializing in neurology. From an early point he saw himself as more of scientist than a doctor. He was committed to extending the compass of human knowledge. This was the focus of his career rather than the practice of medicine. He became an affiliated professor (1902).

Marriage and Children

Freud enjoyed a happy, fullfilling family life without any of neuroisis and prolems he so famoudly studied. Freud married Martha Bernays (1886). She was the second daughter of Emmeline and Berman Bernays. She was raised in an observant Orthodox Jewish family. Her paternal grandfather Isaac Bernays was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. The Bernays and Freud families were well acquainted. Martha's elder brother Eli marryed Freud's younger sister. The two had different ideas about Judaism. The Freuds were liberal Jews and Freud himself was totially uninterested in religiuous observance. Freud did not just experience sexuality from a scientific perspective. Martha was a slim and attractive young woman. She is also described as a charmer. She has been described as a charmer. She was intelligent, educated and well read, but not a scientist that collaborated with Freud. She ran an effucent and harmonious houshold. She was almost obsessive about punctuality and dirt, but was by no means a cold cleaning automan. She is described as firm but loving with her children. French analyst René Laforgue describes Martha as creating a home atmosphere of peaceful 'joie de vivre'. The one differene oif sny siugnificance was over religion. Martha would tell a cousin that "not being allowed to light the Sabbath lights on the first Friday night after her marriage was one of the more upsetting experiences of her life". Martha was unable to establish a close reltionship with Anna, their youngest daughter. There were six children in all: Mathilde (1887), Jean-Martin (1889), Oliver (1891), Ernst (1892), Sophie (1893), and Anna (1895). Martha would console herself after her husband's death,iting "in the 53 years of our marriage there was not a single angry word between us". Their youngest child, Anna, became a distinguished psychoanalyst in her own right. Anna Freud set up a private practice in the treatment of psychological disorders. Much of the clinical material upon which Freud based his theories and pioneering techniques came from Anna's practice.

Vienna

Freud conducted his professional and family life in Vienna. From an early age he lived in Vienna, hcing been brought their as a todler. And it was above all with Vienna that Freud’s name became deeply associated with psychoanalysis for posterity. The brach of psychology he founded is today known as the 'first Viennese school’ of psychoanalysis. It is from Freud and the Vienna School that psychoanalysis as a movement and all subsequent developments in this field flowed.

Psychoanalysis

Freud is best known for inventing psychoanalysis. He became the towering figure is psychology, founding psychoanalysis. This was a clinical method for treating psychopathology using dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. He developed therapeutic techniques such as free association and discovered transference. These methods became central to the analytic process. Freud focus much of his work on sexuality. At the time his ideas on infantile forms led to great controversy. He formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory.

Flu Epidemic and Grandchildren (1918-20)

Europe and America were racked by a flu pandemic at the end of World War I (1918-19). It was the most deadly pandemic in modern times. One of his daughters Sophie Freud (1893–1920) married Hamburg photograoher Max Halberstadt (1882–1940). They had two children, Ernst Wolfgang (1914-2008) and Heinz (1918-23). Sophie died in post-World War I influenza epidemic (1920). Her husband survived, but was apparently unable to take care of the boys. And then after he remarried, his new wife did not take to them. Freud took them in first Heinz and then Ernst. When Heuze died, Freud essentially adopted Ernst. Halberstadt was a succesful Hamburg portrait phographer. He was a founding member of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner and an expert in photographic techniques. His most notable surviving images are those of his father-in-law. Much of his work today is unknown as it was was lost when the NAZIs seized his assetts and oroperty and drove him out of Germany pennyless (1936). He died in South Africa (1940). His son Heinz perhaps weakenbed by the flue, dieds of tuberculosis (1923). Ernest had a long successful life. His grandfather helped get him safely out of Austria (1938). He pursued psycoanalysis as a career in England, t times wirling with Aunt Anna. Late in life retuned to Germany.

NAZI Persecution

Germany surely was the country with the most assisimalted and vibrant Jewish population in the world. Perhaps mopre so than America because Germans Jews were more established and educated than American Jews. The influx of Jews from Eastern Eyrope mean that American Jews were primarily a working class, poorly educated minority. The advent if the NAZIs changed this. Anti-semitism existed in Germany before the NAZIs, but until the NAZIs, the German Government basically ensured the rule of law and limited anti-Semitism as public policy. While Freud was non-religious, his Jewish ancestry and controversy concerning his work along with Einsteun made him an important NAZI target. Like Einstein,and other Jews, his borks were banned. The NAZIs annexed Austria with the Anschluss (1938). They immediately began terrorizing Vienna's substsantial Jewish population. Freud late in life had to leave his beloved Vienna to escape the NAZIs (1938). Freud because of his age and internatiional reputation was allowed to seek refuge in Britain. Ernest Jones, the President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, obtained entry permits from the British allowing them to reach London. Permits were also secured for deveral people close tob the Freuds, including their housekeeper and maid, his doctor, Max Schur and his family, as well as several colleagues and their families. Freud's young grandson, Ernst Halberstadt, was the first to leave Vienna, initially for Paris, before traveling on to London. After the war he would adopt the name Ernest Freud and train as a psychoanalyst. Next to leave for Paris were Ernestine, Sophie, and Walter Freud. They were the wife and children of Freud's eldest son, Martin. Walter joined his father in London. His mother and sister remained in France which at ghe time looked safe. Subsequently they emigrated to the United States. Freud's maternal grandmother was less fortunsate. The NAZIs deported Ida Drucker from Biarritz and she died in Auschwitz, probably gassed upon arrival (1942). Freud’s sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, was the first to leave for London (May 1938). She was followed by his son, Martin, and then his daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher. Freud, his wife and daughter, Anna, left Vienna on 4 June, accompanied by their household staff and a doctor (June). Their arrival at Victoria Station, London attracted widespread press coverage. Freud’s Vienna consulting room was replicated in faithful detail in the new family home, 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, North London. Freud died in London exile (1939). While most of his immedisate family was saved, the Freud family like other Jewish families were devestated by the Holocaust. Four of Freud's five sisters were murdered in NAZI and other concentration camps.





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Created: 8:24 PM 5/2/2018
Last updated: 8:24 PM 5/2/2018