Spotlight: Simply Freud
Thursday, October 25th, 2007Have you ever called your new boyfriend by your ex-boyfriend’s name? Ever told someone, “Oh, I just love your new horse, oops, I mean house”? Credit those slips of the tongue—Freudian slips—to Sigmund Freud, the noted neurologist and psychiatrist. Freud focused on theories of the unconscious mind and repression, where one buries memories and feelings that they don’t want to deal with.
Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Příbor, Moravia, Austria to parents who favored him over his siblings because of his intelligence. Even though they were poor, Freud’s parents put everything they had into his education. The family relocated to Vienna, where Freud graduated with honors from the Leopoldstädter Communal-Realgymnasium before joining the medical faculty at the University of Vienna to study under Darwinist professor Karl Claus.
Freud discovered the school of psychoanalysis, the act of talking through one’s issues with a psychologist or therapist. This was believed to lead to revealing repressed emotions and feelings and help the patient identify and resolve childhood conflicts with parents or others. Freud himself could have benefited from psychoanalysis; he had a deep fear of death and he had deep resentment toward his father and even identified early childhood sexual feelings toward his mother.
There is much more information about Freud to get to know, i.e., his early research on cerebral palsy, his development of the id, ego, and super-ego, and his relationship with Carl Jung, his most promising student. Click the About Freud link to learn more about Freud and his brilliant mind! Don’t forget to take the Simply Freud poll when you are done!
Happy Reading!
