The Life Of Sigmund Freud Essay Research

The Life Of Sigmund Freud Essay, Research Paper Sigmund Freud s revolutionary ideas, have set the standard for modern psychoanalysis. Students of psychology can learn from his ideas which spand from the field of medicine to our daily living. His studies in areas such as unconsciousness, dreams, sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and sexual maladjustment s laid the foundation for future studies and a better understanding of the small things which shapes our lives. In 1873, Freud graduated from the Sperl Gymnasium, in Vienna. Freud was inspired by a public reading of an essay on nature by Johann von Goethe, as a result he decided to turn to medicine as a career(Gay,10). He worked at the University of Vienna with one of the leading physiologists of his day, Ernst Von Brucke, and in

1882, he entered the General Hospital in Vienna as a clinical assistant. After making several conclusions about the brain s medulla, Freud was appointed lecturer in neuropathology. At this time in Freud s career, he developed an interest in the medical uses and benefits of cocaine (Britannica, 582). Although some beneficial results were found in some forms of eye surgery, cocaine use was generally denied by the surgeons of his time. This interest in the narcotic hurt Freud s medical reputation for a time. This episode in Freud s life has been looked upon as an example of his willingness to attempt bold solutions to relieve human suffering (Wittels, 98). From 1885 to 1886, Freud spent nineteen weeks with Jean Martin Charcot, a world famous neurologist, and the director of Paris

asylum. Charcot first introduced Freud to the idea of hysteria and hysterics. Freud became intrigued by the idea of hypnotism (Appignanesi, 34). There was a firm belief that only women could be affected by the use of hypnotism. Freud knew that hysteria could only develop where there is a degeneration of the brain, not just with women but with men too and that hypnotism could have an effect on normal people. Freud lost his interest in hysteria and hypnotism, but developed a liking of the psychoanalytic method of free association. This method encouraged the patient to express any random thoughts that come to mind, which promoted a stream of consciousness that helped tap into the unconsciousness. The material that the patient said in this stream of consciousness was a link to ideas

of the unconscious mind that was normally hidden, forgotten or unavailable to conscious reflection (Freud, 47). In 1904, Sigmund Freud published the book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which explored everyday errors in speech, which he believed, were of interpretable importance. These Freudian slip s were said to arise from immediate hostile, jealous, or egotistic causes. Just one year after publishing his book on psychopathology in everyday situations, Freud published Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. In this book, Freud compared jokes to dreams in the sense that like dreams, jokes were formed in the conscious, but had a base in the unconscious mind. In addition to publishing a book on jokes in 1905, Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

These essays established Freud and some of his associates Richard Von Kraft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, Albert Moll, and Iwan Bloch as the pioneering experts of sexology (Gay, 613). Sexual development in young children, along with the ease of maladjustment in sexual development was the main basis of this publication. Freud stated that sexuality was one of the main movers in humanbehavior. Sigmund Freud outlined three stages of the sexual development of childern: The oral phase, occurs first, plants the seed of the mother being a love object because of breast-feeding. The mother is the first love object for the child. The anal phase, occurs second because of the introduction to toilet training. This stage is especially important because the skill of self-control is put on the child. As