Sigmund Freud (Freud; German Sigmund Freud; full name Sigismund Shlomo Freud, German Sigismund Schlomo Freud). Born May 6, 1856 in Freiberg, Austrian Empire - died September 23, 1939 in London. Austrian psychologist, psychiatrist and neurologist.

Sigmund Freud is best known as the founder of psychoanalysis, which had a significant impact on psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, literature and art of the 20th century. Freud's views on human nature were innovative for his time and throughout the life of the researcher did not stop causing resonance and criticism in scientific community. Interest in the theories of the scientist does not fade even today.

Among the achievements of Freud, the most important are the development of a three-component structural model of the psyche (consisting of “It”, “I” and “Super-I”), highlighting specific phases of the psychosexual development of the personality, creating the theory of the Oedipus complex, discovering defense mechanisms functioning in the psyche, psychologizing the concept of “unconscious”, discovering transference and counter-transference , as well as the development of such therapeutic methods as the method free associations and interpretation of dreams.

Despite the fact that the influence of Freud's ideas and personality on psychology is undeniable, many researchers consider his works to be intellectual charlatanism. Almost every postulate fundamental to Freud's theory has been criticized by prominent scientists and writers, such as Erich Fromm, Albert Ellis, Karl Kraus and many others. The empirical basis of Freud's theory was called "inadequate" by Frederick Krüss and Adolf Grünbaum, psychoanalysis was dubbed "fraud" by Peter Medawar, Freud's theory was considered pseudoscientific by Karl Popper, which, however, did not prevent the outstanding Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist, director of the Vienna Neurological Clinic in his fundamental work " Theory and therapy of neuroses" admit: "And yet, it seems to me, psychoanalysis will be the foundation for the psychotherapy of the future ... Therefore, the contribution made by Freud to the creation of psychotherapy does not lose its value, and what he did is incomparable."

During his life, Freud wrote and published a huge number of scientific works - complete collection his writings are 24 volumes. He had the title of doctor of medicine, professor, honorary doctorate Law of Clark University and was a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, winner of the Goethe Prize, was an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the French Psychoanalytic Society and the British Psychological Society. Not only about psychoanalysis, but also about the scientist himself, many biographical books have been published. More papers are published each year on Freud than on any other psychological theorist.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the small (about 4,500 inhabitants) town of Freiberg in Moravia, which at that time belonged to Austria. The street where Freud was born, the Schlossergasse, now bears his name. Freud's paternal grandfather was Shlomo Freud, he died in February 1856, shortly before the birth of his grandson - it was in his honor that the latter was named.

Sigmund's father, Jacob Freud, was married twice and had two sons from his first marriage - Philip and Emmanuel (Emmanuel). The second time he married at the age of 40 - to Amalia Natanson, who was half his age. Sigmund's parents were Jews of German origin. Jacob Freud had his own modest textile business. Sigmund lived in Freiberg for the first three years of his life, until in 1859 the consequences of the industrial revolution in Central Europe dealt a crushing blow to his father's small business, practically ruining it - as, indeed, almost all of Freiberg, which was in significant decline: after how the restoration of the nearby railway The city experienced a period of rising unemployment. In the same year, the Freuds had a daughter, Anna.

The family decided to move and left Freiberg, moving to Leipzig - the Freuds spent only a year there and, having not achieved significant success, moved to Vienna. Sigmund endured the move from his native town quite hard - the forced separation from his half-brother Philip, with whom he was in close friendly relations, had an especially strong effect on the state of the child: Philip partly even replaced Sigmund's father. The Freud family, being in a difficult financial situation, settled in one of the poorest districts of the city - Leopoldstadt, which at that time was a kind of Viennese ghetto inhabited by the poor, refugees, prostitutes, gypsies, proletarians and Jews. Soon, Jacob's business began to improve, and the Freuds were able to move to a more livable place, although they could not afford luxury. At the same time, Sigmund became seriously interested in literature - he retained the love of reading, instilled by his father, for the rest of his life.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Sigmund doubted for a long time about his future profession - his choice, however, was rather meager due to his social status and then prevailing anti-Semitic sentiments and is limited to commerce, industry, law and medicine. The first two options were immediately rejected by the young man because of his high education, jurisprudence also faded into the background along with youthful ambitions in politics and military affairs. The impulse to accept final decision Freud received from Goethe - once having heard how at one of the lectures the professor reads an essay by a thinker called "Nature", Sigmund decided to sign up for Faculty of Medicine. So, Freud's choice fell on medicine, although he did not have the slightest interest in the latter - later he repeatedly admitted this and wrote: "I did not feel any predisposition to practicing medicine and the profession of a doctor," and in later years he even said that in medicine he never felt “at ease”, and in general he never considered himself a real doctor.

In the fall of 1873, seventeen-year-old Sigmund Freud entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. The first year of study was not directly related to the subsequent specialty and consisted of many courses in the humanities - Sigmund attended numerous seminars and lectures, still not finally choosing a specialty to his taste. During this time, he experienced many difficulties associated with his nationality - because of the anti-Semitic sentiments that prevailed in society, numerous skirmishes took place between him and fellow students. Steadfastly enduring regular ridicule and attacks from his peers, Sigmund began to develop in himself the stamina of character, the ability to give a worthy rebuff in a dispute and the ability to resist criticism: “From early childhood, I was forced to get used to being in the opposition and being banned by the “majority agreement”. Thus the foundations were laid for a certain degree of independence in judgment..

Sigmund began to study anatomy and chemistry, but he enjoyed the lectures of the famous physiologist and psychologist Ernst von Brücke, who had a significant influence on him. In addition, Freud attended classes taught by the eminent zoologist Karl Klaus; acquaintance with this scientist opened wide prospects for independent research practice and scientific work, to which Sigmund gravitated. The efforts of the ambitious student were crowned with success, and in 1876 he got the opportunity to carry out his first research work at the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste, one of the departments of which was headed by Klaus. It was there that Freud wrote the first article published by the Academy of Sciences; it was devoted to revealing sex differences in river eels. During his time under Klaus "Freud quickly stood out among other students, which allowed him twice, in 1875 and 1876, to become a fellow of the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste".

Freud retained an interest in zoology, but after receiving the position of a research fellow at the Institute of Physiology, he completely fell under the influence of Brücke's psychological ideas and moved to his laboratory for scientific work, leaving zoological research. “Under his [Brücke] guidance, the student Freud worked at the Vienna Physiological Institute, sitting for many hours at the microscope. ...He was never as happy as during the years spent in the laboratory studying the structure of nerve cells spinal cord animals". Scientific work completely captured Freud; he studied, among other things, the detailed structure of animal and plant tissues and wrote several articles on anatomy and neurology. Here, at the Physiological Institute, in the late 1870s, Freud met the physician Josef Breuer, with whom he developed strong friendships; both of them had similar characters and a common outlook on life, therefore they quickly found mutual understanding. Freud admired Breuer's scientific talents and learned a lot from him: “He became my friend and helper in difficult conditions my existence. We are used to sharing all our scientific interests with him. Naturally, I derived the main benefit from these relations..

In 1881, Freud passed his final exams with excellent marks and received degree doctor, which, however, did not change his way of life - he remained to work in the laboratory under the command of Brücke, hoping to eventually take the next vacant position and firmly associate himself with scientific work. Freud's supervisor, seeing his ambition and given the financial difficulties he faced due to family poverty, decided to dissuade Sigmund from pursuing a research career. In one of his letters, Brücke remarked: “Young man, you have chosen a path that leads nowhere. There are no vacancies in the Department of Psychology for the next 20 years, and you do not have enough means of subsistence. I see no other solution: leave the institute and start practicing medicine.”. Freud heeded the advice of his teacher - to a certain extent this was facilitated by the fact that in the same year he met Martha Bernays, fell in love with her and decided to marry her; in connection with this, Freud needed money. Martha belonged to a Jewish family with rich cultural traditions - her grandfather, Isaac Bernays, was a rabbi in Hamburg, his two sons - Mikael and Jakob - taught at the Universities of Munich and Bonn. Martha's father, Berman Bernays, worked as a secretary for Lorenz von Stein.

Freud did not have enough experience to open a private practice - at the University of Vienna, he acquired exclusively theoretical knowledge, while clinical practice had to be developed independently. Freud decided that the Vienna city ​​Hospital. Sigmund started with surgery, but after two months he abandoned this idea, finding the work too tiring. Deciding to change his field of activity, Freud switched to neurology, in which he was able to achieve some success - studying the methods of diagnosing and treating children with paralysis, as well as various speech disorders (aphasia), he published a number of works on these topics, which became known in scientific and medical circles. He owns the term "cerebral palsy" (now generally accepted). Freud gained a reputation as a highly skilled neurologist. At the same time, his passion for medicine quickly faded away, and in the third year of work at the Vienna Clinic, Sigmund was completely disappointed in her.

In 1883, he decided to go to work in the psychiatric department, headed by Theodor Meinert, a recognized scientific authority in his field. The period of work under the guidance of Meinert was very productive for Freud - exploring the problems of comparative anatomy and histology, he published such scientific works as “A case of cerebral hemorrhage with a complex of basic indirect symptoms associated with scurvy” (1884), “On the question of the intermediate location oliviform body", "A case of muscle atrophy with extensive loss of sensitivity (violation of pain and temperature sensitivity)" (1885), "Complex acute neuritis of the nerves of the spinal cord and brain", "Origin of the auditory nerve", "Observation of severe unilateral loss of sensitivity in a patient with hysteria » (1886).

In addition, Freud wrote articles for the General Medical Dictionary and created a number of other works on cerebral hemiplegia in children and aphasia. For the first time in his life, work overwhelmed Sigmund with his head and turned into a true passion for him. At the same time, striving for scientific recognition the young man experienced a feeling of dissatisfaction with his work, because, in his own opinion, he did not achieve really significant success; psychological condition Freud was rapidly deteriorating, he was regularly in a state of melancholy and depression.

For a short time, Freud worked in the venereal division of the department of dermatology, where he studied the relationship of syphilis with diseases of the nervous system. He devoted his free time to laboratory research. In an effort to expand his practical skills as much as possible for further independent private practice, from January 1884 Freud moved to the department of nervous diseases. Shortly thereafter, a cholera epidemic broke out in Montenegro, neighboring Austria, and the country's government asked for help in providing medical control at the border - most of Freud's senior colleagues volunteered, and his immediate supervisor at that time was on a two-month vacation; due to circumstances, for a long time, Freud served as chief physician of the department.

In 1884, Freud read about the experiments of a certain German military doctor with a new drug - cocaine. There have been claims in scientific papers that this substance can increase endurance and significantly reduce fatigue. Freud was extremely interested in what he had read and decided to conduct a series of experiments on himself.

The first mention of this substance by scientists is dated April 21, 1884 - in one of the letters, Freud noted: “I got some cocaine and will try to test its effect by applying it in cases of heart disease, as well as nervous exhaustion, especially in a terrible state of withdrawal from morphine”. The effect of cocaine made a strong impression on the scientist, the drug was characterized by him as an effective analgesic, which makes it possible to carry out the most complex surgical operations; an enthusiastic article on the substance came out from Freud's pen in 1884 and was called "About coke". For a long time, the scientist used cocaine as an anesthetic, using it on his own and prescribing it to his fiancee Martha. Fascinated by the "magic" properties of cocaine, Freud insisted on its use by his friend Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, who was ill with a serious infectious disease, had a finger amputation and suffered from severe headaches (and also suffered from morphine addiction).

Freud advised a friend to use cocaine as a cure for morphine abuse. The desired result was not achieved - von Marxov subsequently quickly became addicted to a new substance, and he began to have frequent attacks similar to delirium tremens, accompanied by terrible pains and hallucinations. At the same time, from all over Europe, reports of cocaine poisoning and addiction began to arrive, about the deplorable consequences of its use.

However, Freud's enthusiasm did not diminish - he explored cocaine as an anesthetic in various surgical operations. The result of the work of the scientist was a voluminous publication in the "Central Journal of General Therapy" about cocaine, in which Freud outlined the history of the use of coca leaves by South American Indians, described the history of the plant's penetration into Europe and detailed the results. own observations for the effects of cocaine use. In the spring of 1885, the scientist gave a lecture on given substance in which he acknowledged the possible Negative consequences from its use, but at the same time noted that he did not observe any cases of addiction (this happened before the deterioration of von Marxov's condition). Freud ended the lecture with the words: “I do not hesitate to advise the use of cocaine in subcutaneous injections 0.3-0.5 grams, without worrying about its accumulation in the body ". Criticism was not long in coming - already in June the first major works appeared, condemning Freud's position and proving its inconsistency. Scientific controversy regarding the appropriateness of the use of cocaine continued until 1887. During this period, Freud published several other works - "On the study of the action of cocaine" (1885), "On the General Effects of Cocaine" (1885), "Cocaine addiction and cocainophobia" (1887).

By the beginning of 1887, science had definitively debunked latest myths about cocaine - it "was publicly condemned as one of the scourges of mankind, along with opium and alcohol." Freud, by that time already addicted to cocaine, until 1900 suffered from headaches, heart attacks and frequent nosebleeds. It is noteworthy that Freud not only experienced the destructive effect of a dangerous substance on himself, but also unwittingly (since at that time the perniciousness of cocainism had not yet been proven) spread to many acquaintances. This fact of his biography E. Jones stubbornly concealed and preferred not to cover, however this information became credibly known from published letters in which Jones claimed: “Before the dangers of drugs were identified, Freud was already a social threat, as he pushed everyone he knew to take cocaine.”.

In 1885, Freud decided to take part in a competition held among junior doctors, the winner of which received the right to a scientific internship in Paris with the famous psychiatrist Jean Charcot.

In addition to Freud himself, there were many promising doctors among the applicants, and Sigmund was by no means the favorite, which he was well aware of; the only chance for him was the help of influential professors and scientists in academia, with whom he had previously had the opportunity to work. Enlisting the support of Brucke, Meinert, Leidesdorf (in his private clinic for the mentally ill, Freud briefly replaced one of the doctors) and several other scientists he knew, Freud won the competition, receiving thirteen votes in his support against eight. The chance to study under Charcot was a great success for Sigmund, he had great hopes for the future in connection with the upcoming trip. So, shortly before his departure, he enthusiastically wrote to his bride: “Little Princess, my little Princess. Oh how wonderful it will be! I will come with money ... Then I will go to Paris, become a great scientist and return to Vienna with a big, just a huge halo over my head, we will immediately get married, and I will cure all the incurable nervous patients ”.

In the autumn of 1885, Freud arrived in Paris to see Charcot, who at that time was at the height of his fame. Charcot studied the causes and treatment of hysteria. In particular, the main work of the neurologist was the study of the use of hypnosis - the use this method allowed him to both induce and eliminate such hysterical symptoms as paralysis of the limbs, blindness and deafness. Under Charcot, Freud worked at the Salpêtrière clinic. Encouraged by Charcot's methods and impressed by his clinical success, he offered his services as an interpreter of his mentor's lectures into German, for which he received his permission.

In Paris, Freud was passionately involved in neuropathology, studying the differences between patients who experienced paralysis due to physical trauma and those who developed symptoms of paralysis due to hysteria. Freud was able to establish that hysterical patients vary greatly in the severity of paralysis and injury sites, and also to identify (with the help of Charcot) the existence of certain links between hysteria and problems of a sexual nature. At the end of February 1886, Freud left Paris and decided to spend some time in Berlin, getting the opportunity to study childhood diseases at the Adolf Baginsky clinic, where he spent several weeks before returning to Vienna.

On September 13 of the same year, Freud married his beloved Martha Bernay, who subsequently bore him six children - Matilda (1887-1978), Martin (1889-1969), Oliver (1891-1969), Ernst (1892-1966), Sophie ( 1893-1920) and Anna (1895-1982). After returning to Austria, Freud began working at the institute under the direction of Max Kassovitz. He was involved in translations and reviews scientific literature, led a private practice, mainly working with neurotics, which "immediately put on the agenda the issue of therapy, which was not so relevant for scientists involved in research activities." Freud knew about the success of his friend Breuer and the possibilities of successfully applying his "cathartic method" in the treatment of neuroses (this method was discovered by Breuer while working with the patient Anna O, and later was reused together with Freud and was first described in "Studies in Hysteria") , but Charcot, who remained an unquestioned authority for Sigmund, was very skeptical about this technique. Freud's own experience told him that Breuer's research was very promising; beginning in December 1887, he increasingly resorted to the use of hypnotic suggestion in his work with patients.

In the course of his work with Breuer, Freud gradually began to realize the imperfection of the cathartic method and of hypnosis in general. In practice, it turned out that its effectiveness was far from being as high as Breuer claimed, and in some cases the treatment did not work at all - in particular, hypnosis was not able to overcome the patient's resistance, expressed in the suppression of traumatic memories. Often there were patients who were not at all suitable for induction into a hypnotic state, and the condition of some patients worsened after the sessions. Between 1892 and 1895, Freud began looking for another method of treatment that would be more effective than hypnosis. To begin with, Freud tried to get rid of the need to use hypnosis, using a methodical trick - pressure on the forehead in order to suggest to the patient that he must definitely remember the events and experiences that had previously taken place in his life. The main task that the scientist solved was to obtain the desired information about the patient's past in his normal (and not hypnotic) state. The use of the laying on of the palm had some effect, allowing us to move away from hypnosis, but still remained an imperfect technique, and Freud continued to search for a solution to the problem.

The answer to the question that so occupied the scientist turned out to be quite accidentally suggested by the book of one of Freud's favorite writers, Ludwig Börne. His essay "The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days" ended with: “Write everything you think about yourself, about your successes, about Turkish war, about Goethe, about the criminal process and its judges, about your bosses - and in three days you will be amazed at how much completely new, unknown to you ideas lie in you.. This thought prompted Freud to use the entire array of information that clients reported about themselves in dialogues with him as a key to understanding their psyche.

Subsequently, the method of free association became the main method in Freud's work with patients. Many patients reported that pressure from the doctor - the insistent compulsion to "pronounce" all the thoughts that come to mind - prevents them from concentrating. That is why Freud abandoned the “methodical trick” with pressure on the forehead and allowed his clients to say whatever they wanted. The essence of the technique of free association is to follow the rule according to which the patient is invited to freely, without concealment, express his thoughts on the topic proposed by the psychoanalyst, without trying to concentrate. Thus, according to theoretical provisions Freud, thought will unconsciously move towards what is significant (what worries), overcoming resistance due to lack of concentration. From Freud's point of view, no thought that appears is random - it is always a derivative of the processes that happened (and are happening) with the patient. Any association can become fundamentally important for establishing the causes of the disease. The use of this method made it possible to completely abandon the use of hypnosis in sessions and, according to Freud himself, served as an impetus for the formation and development of psychoanalysis.

The result of the joint work of Freud and Breuer was the publication of the book "Studies in Hysteria" (1895). The main clinical case described in this work - the case of Anna O - gave impetus to the emergence of one of the most important ideas for Freudianism - the concept of transfer (transfer) ( this idea Freud first arose when he was thinking about the case of Anna O, who at that time was Breuer's patient, who told the latter that she was expecting a child from him and imitating childbirth in a state of insanity), and also formed the basis of the ideas that appeared later about the oedipal complex and the infantile ( child) sexuality. Summarizing the data obtained during the collaboration, Freud wrote: “Our hysterical patients suffer from memories. Their symptoms are remnants and symbols of memories of known (traumatic) experiences.. The publication of the Hysteria Studies is called by many researchers the "birthday" of psychoanalysis. It is worth noting that by the time the work was published, Freud's relationship with Breuer had finally broken off. The reasons for the divergence of scientists in professional views to this day remain not completely clear; Freud's close friend and biographer Ernest Jones believed that Breuer categorically disagreed with Freud's opinion about the important role of sexuality in the etiology of hysteria, and this was the main reason for their breakup.

Many respected Viennese doctors - mentors and colleagues of Freud - turned away from him after Breuer. The statement that it is repressed memories (thoughts, ideas) of a sexual nature that underlie hysteria provoked a scandal and formed an extremely negative attitude to Freud from the intellectual elite. At the same time, a long-term friendship between the scientist and Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin otolaryngologist, who attended his lectures for some time, began to emerge. Fliess soon became very close to Freud, who was rejected by the academic community, had lost his old friends and was in desperate need of support and understanding. Friendship with Fliss turned into a true passion for him, capable of being compared with the love for his wife.

On October 23, 1896, Jacob Freud died, whose death Sigmund experienced especially acutely: against the backdrop of despair and a sense of loneliness that seized Freud, he began to develop a neurosis. It is for this reason that Freud decided to apply analysis to himself, exploring childhood memories through the method of free association. This experience laid the foundations of psychoanalysis. None of the previous methods were suitable for achieving desired result, and then Freud turned to the study of his own dreams.

In the period from 1897 to 1899, Freud worked hard on what he later considered his most important work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, German Die Traumdeutung). An important role in preparing the book for publication was played by Wilhelm Fliess, to whom Freud sent the written chapters for evaluation - it was at the suggestion of Fliess that many details were removed from the Interpretation. Immediately after its publication, the book did not have any significant impact on the public and received only minor publicity. The psychiatric community generally ignored the release of The Interpretation of Dreams. The importance of this work for the scientist throughout his life remained undeniable - thus, in the preface to the third English edition in 1931, the seventy-five-year-old Freud wrote: “This book ... in full accordance with my current ideas ... contains the most valuable of the discoveries that a favorable fate has allowed me to make. Insights of this kind fall to the lot of a person, but only once in a lifetime..

According to Freud's assumptions, dreams have overt and covert content. Explicit content is directly what a person talks about, remembering his dream. The latent content is a hallucinatory fulfillment of some desire of the dreamer, masked by certain visual pictures with the active participation of the Self, which seeks to bypass the censorship restrictions of the Superego, which suppresses this desire. The interpretation of dreams, according to Freud, lies in the fact that on the basis of free associations that are found for individual parts of dreams, certain substitute representations can be evoked that open the way to the true (hidden) content of the dream. Thus, thanks to the interpretation of fragments of a dream, its general meaning is recreated. The process of interpretation is the "translation" of the explicit content of the dream into the hidden thoughts that initiated it.

Freud expressed the opinion that the images perceived by the dreamer are the result of the work of the dream, expressed in displacement (minor ideas acquire high value, originally inherent in another phenomenon), condensation (in one representation the set of meanings formed through associative chains coincides) and substitution (replacement of specific thoughts with symbols and images), which turn the hidden content of a dream into an explicit one. A person's thoughts are transformed into certain images and symbols through the process of visual and symbolic representation - in relation to the dream, Freud called this the primary process. Further, these images are transformed into some meaningful content (the plot of a dream appears) - this is how recycling (secondary process) functions. However, recycling may not take place - in this case, the dream turns into a stream of strangely intertwined images, becomes abrupt and fragmented.

Despite the rather cool reaction of the scientific community to the release of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud gradually began to form around himself a group of like-minded people who became interested in his theories and views. Freud became occasionally accepted in psychiatric circles, sometimes using his techniques in work; medical journals began to publish reviews of his writings. Since 1902, the scientist regularly received in his house interested in the development and dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas of doctors, as well as artists and writers. The beginning of the weekly meetings was laid by one of Freud's patients, Wilhelm Stekel, who had previously successfully completed a course of treatment for neurosis with him; It was Stekel who, in one of his letters, invited Freud to meet at his house to discuss his work, to which the doctor agreed, inviting Stekel himself and several especially interested listeners - Max Kahane, Rudolf Reiter and Alfred Adler.

The resulting club was named "Psychological Society on Wednesdays"; its meetings were held until 1908. For six years, the society acquired a fairly large number of listeners, whose composition changed regularly. It has steadily grown in popularity. “It turned out that psychoanalysis gradually aroused interest in itself and found friends, proved that there are scientists ready to acknowledge it". Thus, the members of the "Psychological Society", who subsequently received the greatest fame, were Alfred Adler (member of the society since 1902), Paul Federn (since 1903), Otto Rank, Isidor Zadger (both since 1906), Max Eitingon, Ludwig Biswanger and Karl Abraham (all from 1907), Abraham Brill, Ernest Jones and Sandor Ferenczi (all from 1908). On April 15, 1908, the society was reorganized and received a new name - the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association.

The development of the "Psychological Society" and the growing popularity of the ideas of psychoanalysis coincided with one of the most productive periods in Freud's work - his books were published: "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901, which deals with one of the important aspects of the theory of psychoanalysis, namely reservations), "Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious" and "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (both 1905). Freud's popularity as a scientist and medical practitioner grew steadily: "Freud's private practice increased so much that it occupied the entire working week. Very few of his patients, both then and later, were residents of Vienna. Most of the patients came from Eastern Europe: Russia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, etc.”.

Freud's ideas began to gain popularity abroad - interest in his works manifested itself especially clearly in the Swiss city of Zurich, where, since 1902, psychoanalytic concepts were actively used in psychiatry by Eugen Bleuler and his colleague Carl Gustav Jung, who were engaged in research on schizophrenia. Jung, who held Freud's ideas in high regard and admired himself, published The Psychology of Dementia praecox in 1906, which was based on his own developments of Freud's concepts. The latter, having received from Jung this work, highly appreciated it, and a correspondence began between the two scientists, which lasted almost seven years. Freud and Jung first met in person in 1907 - the young researcher strongly impressed Freud, who, in turn, believed that Jung was destined to become his scientific heir and continue the development of psychoanalysis.

In 1908, an official psychoanalytic congress was held in Salzburg - rather modestly organized, it took only one day, but was in fact the first international event in the history of psychoanalysis. Among the speakers, in addition to Freud himself, there were 8 people who presented their work; the meeting gathered only 40-odd listeners. It was during this speech that Freud first introduced one of the five main clinical cases - the case history of the "Rat Man" (also found in the translation of "The Man with the Rats"), or the psychoanalysis of neurosis. obsessive states. The real success, which opened the way for psychoanalysis to international recognition, was the invitation of Freud to the USA - in 1909, Granville Stanley Hall invited him to give a course of lectures at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts).

Freud's lectures were received with great enthusiasm and interest, and the scientist was awarded an honorary doctorate. More and more patients from all over the world turned to him for advice. Upon his return to Vienna, Freud continued to publish, publishing several works, including " family romance neurotics" and "Analysis of the phobia of a five-year-old boy". Encouraged by the successful reception in the United States and the growing popularity of psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung decided to organize a second psychoanalytic congress, held in Nuremberg on March 30-31, 1910. The scientific part of the congress was successful, in contrast to the unofficial part. On the one hand, the International Psychoanalytic Association was established, but at the same time, Freud's closest associates began to divide into opposing groups.

Despite disagreements within the psychoanalytic community, Freud did not stop his own scientific activity - in 1910 he published Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (which he gave at Clark University) and several other small works. In the same year, Freud published the book Leonardo da Vinci. Childhood Memories”, dedicated to the great Italian artist.

After the second psychoanalytic congress in Nuremberg, the conflicts that had matured by that time escalated to the limit, initiating a split in the ranks of Freud's closest associates and colleagues. The first to come out of Freud's inner circle was Alfred Adler, whose disagreements with the founding father of psychoanalysis began as early as 1907, when his work An Investigation into the Inferiority of Organs was published, which aroused the indignation of many psychoanalysts. In addition, Adler was greatly disturbed by the attention that Freud paid to his protégé Jung; in this regard, Jones (who characterized Adler as "a gloomy and captious person, whose behavior oscillates between grumpiness and sullenness") wrote: “Any unrestrained childhood complexes could find expression in rivalry and jealousy for his [Freud's] favor. The requirement to be a "favorite child" also had an important material motive, since the economic situation of young analysts for the most part depended on the patients that Freud could refer to them". Due to the preferences of Freud, who made the main bet on Jung, and the ambition of Adler, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. At the same time, Adler constantly quarreled with other psychoanalysts, defending the priority of his ideas.

Freud and Adler disagreed on a number of points. First, Adler considered the desire for power to be the main motive that determines human behavior, while Freud assigned the main role of sexuality. Secondly, the emphasis in Adler's studies of personality was placed on the social environment of a person - Freud paid the most attention to the unconscious. Thirdly, Adler considered the Oedipus complex a fabrication, and this was completely contrary to Freud's ideas. However, while rejecting the fundamental ideas for Adler, the founder of psychoanalysis recognized their importance and partial validity. Despite this, Freud was forced to expel Adler from the psychoanalytic society, obeying the demands of the rest of its members. Adler's example was followed by his closest colleague and friend, Wilhelm Stekel.

A short time later, Carl Gustav Jung also left the circle of Freud's closest associates - their relationship was completely spoiled by differences in scientific views; Jung did not accept Freud's position that repressions are always explained by sexual trauma, and in addition, he was actively interested in mythological images, spiritualistic phenomena and occult theories, which greatly annoyed Freud. Moreover, Jung disputed one of the main provisions of Freud's theory: he considered the unconscious not an individual phenomenon, but the heritage of ancestors - all people who have ever lived in the world, that is, he considered it as "collective unconscious".

Jung also did not accept Freud's views on libido: if for the latter this concept meant psychic energy, fundamental to the manifestations of sexuality directed at various objects, then for Jung libido was simply a designation of a general tension. The final break between the two scientists came with the publication of Jung's Symbols of Transformation (1912), which criticized and challenged Freud's basic postulates, and proved extremely painful for both of them. Besides the fact that Freud lost a very close friend, with a strong blow for him there were differences in views with Jung, in whom he initially saw a successor, a successor to the development of psychoanalysis. The loss of support of the entire Zurich school also played its role - with the departure of Jung, the psychoanalytic movement lost a number of talented scientists.

In 1913, Freud completed a long and very hard work over fundamental work "Totem and Taboo". "Since writing The Interpretation of Dreams, I have not worked on anything with such confidence and enthusiasm" he wrote about this book. Among other things, the work on the psychology of primitive peoples was considered by Freud as one of the largest scientific counterarguments to the Zurich school of psychoanalysis headed by Jung: "Totem and taboo", according to the author, was supposed to finally separate his inner circle from dissidents.

The First World War began, and Vienna fell into decay, which naturally affected Freud's practice. Economic situation The scientist was rapidly deteriorating, as a result of which he developed depression. The newly formed Committee turned out to be the last circle of like-minded people in Freud's life: "We became the last associates that he was ever destined to have," recalled Ernest Jones. Freud, who was in financial difficulties and had enough free time due to the reduced number of patients, resumed his scientific activity: “Freud withdrew into himself and turned to scientific work. ... Science personified his work, his passion, his rest and was a saving remedy from external hardships and internal experiences. The following years became very productive for him - in 1914, Michelangelo's Moses, An Introduction to Narcissism, and An Essay on the History of Psychoanalysis came out from under his pen. In parallel, Freud worked on a series of essays that Ernest Jones calls the most profound and important in the scientific activity of a scientist - these are "Instincts and Their Fate", "Repression", "The Unconscious", "A Metapsychological Complement to the Doctrine of Dreams" and "Sadness and Melancholy ".

In the same period, Freud returned to the use of the previously abandoned concept of "metapsychology" (the term was first used in a letter to Fliess dated 1896). It became one of the key in his theory. By the word "metapsychology" Freud understood the theoretical foundation of psychoanalysis, as well as a specific approach to the study of the psyche. According to the scientist, a psychological explanation can be considered complete (that is, “metapsychological”) only if it establishes the existence of a conflict or connection between the levels of the psyche (topography), determines the amount and type of energy expended (economics) and the balance of forces in consciousness, which can be directed to work together or oppose each other (dynamics). A year later, the work "Metapsychology" was published, explaining the main provisions of his teaching.

With the end of the war, Freud's life only changed for the worse - he was forced to spend the money set aside for old age, there were even fewer patients, one of his daughters - Sophia - died of the flu. Nevertheless, the scientific activity of the scientist did not stop - he wrote the works “Beyond the pleasure principle” (1920), “Psychology of the masses” (1921), “I and It” (1923).

In April 1923, Freud was diagnosed with a palate tumor; the operation to remove it was unsuccessful and almost cost the scientist his life. Subsequently, he had to endure 32 more operations. Soon, the cancer began to spread, and part of Freud's jaw was removed - from that moment on, he used an extremely painful prosthesis that left non-healing wounds, in addition to everything else, it prevented him from speaking. The darkest period in Freud's life came: he could no longer lecture, because the audience did not understand him. Until his death, his daughter Anna took care of him: “It was she who went to congresses and conferences, where she read out the texts of speeches prepared by her father.” A series of sad events for Freud continued: at the age of four, his grandson Heinele (the son of the late Sophia) died of tuberculosis, and some time later his close friend Karl Abraham died; Sadness and grief began to take hold of Freud, and words about his own approaching death began to appear more and more often in his letters.

In the summer of 1930, Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize for his significant contribution to science and literature, which brought great satisfaction to the scientist and contributed to the spread of psychoanalysis in Germany. However, this event turned out to be overshadowed by another loss: at the age of ninety-five, Freud's mother Amalia died of gangrene. The most terrible trials for the scientist were just beginning - in 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and National Socialism became the state ideology. New power a number of discriminatory laws against Jews were passed, and books that contradicted Nazi ideology were destroyed. Along with the works of Heine, Marx, Mann, Kafka and Einstein, the works of Freud were also banned. The Psychoanalytic Association was dissolved by government order, many of its members were repressed and their funds were confiscated. Many of Freud's associates persistently suggested that he leave the country, but he flatly refused.

In 1938, after the annexation of Austria to Germany and the ensuing persecution of Jews by the Nazis, Freud's position became much more complicated. After the arrest of his daughter Anna and interrogation by the Gestapo, Freud decided to leave the Third Reich and go to England. It turned out to be difficult to carry out the plan: in exchange for the right to leave the country, the authorities demanded an impressive amount of money, which Freud did not have. The scientist had to resort to the help of influential friends in order to obtain permission to emigrate. Thus, his longtime friend William Bullitt, then the US ambassador to France, interceded for Freud before President Franklin Roosevelt. The German ambassador to France, Count von Welzek, also joined the petitions. Through joint efforts, Freud received the right to leave the country, but the question of "debt to the German government" remained unresolved. Freud was helped to resolve it by his longtime friend (as well as a patient and student) - Marie Bonaparte, Princess of Greece and Denmark, who lent the necessary funds.

In the summer of 1939, Freud suffered particularly badly from a progressive illness. The scientist turned to Dr. Max Schur, who was caring for him, reminding him of his earlier promise to help die. At first, Anna, who did not leave a single step from her sick father, opposed his desire, but soon agreed. On September 23, Schur injected Freud with several cubes of morphine, a dose sufficient to end the life of an old man weakened by illness. At three o'clock in the morning, Sigmund Freud died. The scientist's body was cremated at Golders Green, and the ashes were placed in an ancient Etruscan vase donated to Freud by Marie Bonaparte. A vase with the ashes of a scientist stands in the mausoleum of Ernest George (Ernest George Mausoleum) in Golders Green.

On the night of January 1, 2014, unknown people made their way to the crematorium, where there was a vase with the ashes of Martha and Sigmund Freud, and broke it. Now the police in London have taken up the matter. The caretakers of the crematorium moved the vase with the ashes of the spouses to a safe place. The reasons for the attacker's act are not clear.

Works of Sigmund Freud:

1899 Interpretation of Dreams
1901 Psychopathology of everyday life
1905 Three essays on the theory of sexuality
1913 Totem and Taboo
1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle
1921 Psychology of the masses and analysis of the human "I"
1927 The Future of One Illusion
1930 Dissatisfaction with culture

FREUD (Freud) Sigmund (Shlomo; Freud, Sigmund; 1856, Freiberg, Austria, now Przybor, Czech Republic, - 1939, London), Austrian doctor and psychologist, founder of the teaching of psychoanalysis. Born in the family of a native of Eastern Galicia, a wool merchant who settled in Vienna in 1860. He grew up and was brought up in a semi-assimilated environment. AT gymnasium years Freud's idol was J. W. Goethe, a poet and naturalist.

At the University of Vienna, where Freud entered in 1873, he was strongly influenced by the energy ideas of H. Helmholtz, whose follower was his teacher and the first scientific director E. Brücke, Head of the Laboratory of Animal Physiology. In 1882, a year after receiving his doctorate, Freud left the laboratory, took up practical medicine (mainly due to financial difficulties) and began working in the mental illness department of the Central Vienna Hospital headed by the famous physician and researcher T. Meinert.

In 1884, having discovered the analgesic effect of cocaine, Freud contributed to the development of the doctrine of local anesthesia. In 1885, for his success in the treatment of a nervous disorder of speech, Freud was invited to lecture at the University of Vienna, and was also sent for an internship in France to the Parisian doctor J. Charcot, who became famous for the successful treatment of hysteria through hypnosis, as well as to another doctor famous in the field of hypnosis - I. Bernheim, who lived in Nancy. The starting point of all subsequent work of Freud after returning to Vienna was the observations of J. Charcot, indicating the absence of any somatic disorders in the brain, even in the most acute forms and manifestations of hysteria (paroxysmal seizures, sensitivity disorder, functional disorders movement, speech, etc.). In 1891, the attention of scientists was attracted by Freud's work "On Aphasia", in which, in particular, for the first time he made a reasoned criticism of the then generally accepted concept of localization of brain functions in certain centers and proposed an alternative functional genetic approach to the study of the psyche and its physiological mechanisms. In the article "Defensive neuropsychoses" (1894) and the work "The study of hysteria" (1895, together with I. Breuer), it was evidenced that there is an inverse effect of mental pathology on physiological processes and the dependence of somatic symptoms on emotional state patient. In these works, Freud laid the foundations of psychoanalysis as a method of direct treatment of the psyche, and not of physiological disorders, to which the treatment of any nervous disorders had previously been reduced. During this period, Freud, in connection with a nervous breakdown that befell him after the death of his father, tested the method and technique of psychoanalysis on himself.

In the late 1890s - early 1900s. the framework of psychotherapy became narrow for Freud; he began to build on the basis of psychoanalysis general theory the human psyche, which reconsiders the view of those mental states and processes that the psychological school of W. Wundt, which dominated science in those years, considered normal.

As a result, Freud found himself in scientific isolation. Academic circles almost unanimously rejected and condemned psychoanalysis, mainly because of the decisive role that it assigned to sexual desire (libido) in all mental life man and in many areas of human activity (see Freudianism). True, in 1902 Freud became an extraordinary (freelance) professor at the University of Vienna, not as a psychoanalyst, but as a specialist in nervous diseases. Wishing to put an end to scientific isolation, Freud in 1906 announced the creation of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, whose members were his students and adherents A. Adler, M. Kahane, R. Reitler and W. Steckel, who, since 1902, had been gathering on Wednesdays at your teacher. By 1908, the members of this society were already 22 people, including the Swiss psychiatrist K. Jung and the Englishman E. Jones. In the same year, Freud announced the creation of the International Psychoanalytic Association. In 1909, at the invitation of the president of Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts), Freud, together with C. Jung, traveled to the United States, where he gave a course in psychoanalysis for the first time with great success.

Thanks to the enormous energy of Freud, as well as the brilliant literary style of his work, the fame and popularity of psychoanalysis has steadily grown (see Freudianism). Already on the eve of the First World War, psychoanalytic societies and associations existed in several European countries, and Freud himself turned out to be not so much a leader scientific school, how much the leader of a movement that developed in parallel with the "normative" university science.

Academic rejection of psychoanalysis scientific theory traumatized Freud, who from his youth most of all dreamed of the glory of a great scientist; at the same time, to a certain extent, this freed him from the need to follow the requirements of strict evidence accepted in the scientific community, empirical verifiability of hypotheses and concepts. Before the First World War, the framework of psychology also became cramped for Freud; going beyond it, he created new concepts, even more speculative than the previous ones, in which, however, they received an unexpected, and often fascinating solution to many problems that orthodox science could not cope with.

In the period between the two world wars, Freud gained worldwide fame (he, in particular, was an honorary citizen of Vienna, winner of the prestigious Goethe literary prize, 1930, etc.). However, Freud's life was overshadowed by the scandalous shade that his worldwide fame had in the eyes of many scientists revered by him, and the apostasy of a number of associates (in 1911 - A. Adler, in 1913 - K. Jung and others), who chose their own, not teacher-approved scientific path within psychoanalysis. In addition, since 1923, Freud suffered from cancer of the palate, underwent 33 painful operations, but continued to work until the last days of his life.

In 1938, after the Anschluss (see Austria), the seriously ill Freud remained in Vienna; thanks to the personal intervention of F. Roosevelt and other influential people, as well as a large ransom paid to the Nazis, he was able to be taken to England.

Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, not only made a major contribution to European and all Western culture, but also significantly changed its entire appearance. Neither the fear that Freud's innovations threatened the very existence of European culture, nor the hope that they would be transient, were confirmed. Western culture successfully assimilated the main ideas and concepts of Freud, but paid for this by abandoning a number of attitudes that were previously considered unshakable in it. Thus, Freud proved the illusory nature of the inherited European culture of the 19th century. from the French Enlightenment belief in man as a rational being, which, unlike animals, is guided by reason. In contrast to this, Freud discovered for European culture the irrational background of the mind itself - the sphere of the subconscious, in which irrational impulses and drives dominate. Already in the works of the 1890s. Freud came up with the concept of a multi-level structure of the human psyche, which consciousness does not exhaust and is not the main thing in it - it is assigned only the function of a barrier in front of dark unconscious drives, submission to which would have detrimental consequences for a person.

In The Interpretation of Dreams (published in November 1899, dated by the publisher 1900), Freud presented dreams as “the neuroses of a healthy person”: in dreams, in conditions of a temporary shutdown of control of consciousness, forbidden drives find symbolic satisfaction repressed into the subconscious mind. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904), domestic conflicts, family quarrels, turmoil in personal life, etc. theory of sexual desire "(1905) Freud developed the concept of the psychosexual development of the individual; sexual desire, according to this theory, is inherent in a person from the day of birth and manifests itself in its own way at each age (Freud argued that already in early childhood there is a subconscious desire for incest with a parent of the opposite sex and, as a result of this, hostile impulses towards the parent opponent, which he called the Oedipus complex). The outrage that these theories aroused in academic and wider cultural circles, where they were qualified as unproven and obscene, reached a peak after Freud's report (in the article "Fragments of the analysis of a case of hysteria", 1906) about the discoveries he had found in the subconscious mind of a young innocent girl unusual sexual tendencies.

Freud's teaching, however, also overcame resistance academic science, and initial biases. The decisive role in this was played by the universal recognition of the principles of repression and sublimation that became the basis of psychoanalysis - the equal impossibility of their strictly scientific evidence or refutation allowed using them to explain any mental phenomena. According to Freud, irrational, mainly sexual, suppressed by consciousness and unsatisfied, do not disappear without a trace, but are forced out of consciousness into the sphere of the unconscious, from where, having retained all mental energy, they put constant pressure on consciousness. Using the principle of sublimation, Freud explains how impulses and drives repressed into the subconscious stimulate creative behavior and creative search in science and art.

On the basis of these principles, Freud built the whole technique of psychoanalysis (replacing hypnosis by the method of free association) as a means of penetrating into the realm of the unconscious of a neurotic patient, discovering the hidden causes of the disease there, and then eliminating them through rational explanation. The success of psychoanalysis made Freud the universally recognized creator of modern psychotherapy and all psychosomatic medicine and ensured even greater success for Freudianism as a metapsychological and universal cultural theory, which offers something that no other theory has previously succeeded in: a unified explanation of the most diverse phenomena of the mental, spiritual, social, cultural and other spheres of human life.

So, the birth in primitive world The first rudiments of civilization are devoted to the work "Totem and Taboo" (1913), which tells in a fascinating way about the event that marked the beginning of human history, - the murder and eating of the father and the leader of the tribe by rival sons (realization of the Oedipus complex); according to Freud, the subsequent discord and chaos led primitive people to deep repentance, which rooted in their subconsciousness a guilt complex that became hereditary, which sublimated into the worship of the totem, into the transfer of the omnipotence and other qualities of the father to it, into the first prohibitions, etc. Later in The Psychology of the Masses and the Human Self (1921), Freud described with amazing accuracy many features of future totalitarian regimes, deducing the possibility of their emergence from a complex of guilt and remorse for the once committed murder of the father, from the unconscious need of the masses for self-identification with the leader symbolizing the father, leader and from the readiness of the masses to blindly and unitedly follow him. In a number of works, for example, “Beyond the pleasure principle” (1920), “Ego and id” (“I and it”, 1923), “The future of one illusion” (1927), “Culture and its prohibitions” (1930) , religion, mythology, art and almost all other results appear as sublimation products of unconscious, irrational drives and impulses, mainly libido. creative activity. Toward the end of Freud's life, his teachings acquired (despite the fact that he still had influential opponents, especially among scientists) an enormous influence on various areas of culture.

Freud's other works include An Outline of an Autobiography (1925), in which Freud first reported on the course and results of a psychoanalytic experiment in the 1890s. over himself, as well as works in which the doctrine is presented in its final form: “New introductory lectures into Psychoanalysis (1933) and Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938). Freud's works have been published many times and continue to be published in dozens of languages ​​around the world. In English in 1953–56 his complete works were published in 23 volumes. Beginning in 1910, when The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was translated, and until the end of the 1930s. Freud's works were repeatedly published in Russian. During the years of the so-called perestroika, and especially after the fall of the communist regime, Freud's works began to be published again and widely popularized in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union ("Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Lectures", M., 1989; "Psychology of the Unconscious", M., 1989; "The Future of an Illusion (Twilight of the Gods)", M., 1989; "Essays on the Psychology of Sexuality", M., 1989).

Scientists involved in the study of psychoanalysis and its socio-psychological origins almost unanimously admit that in its creation big role played the Jewish origin of Freud. Psychoanalysis is often viewed as Freud's reaction to the racial approach to health and disease, which was widespread in European medicine in the 2nd half of the 19th century and supported by references to the theory of C. Darwin, according to which, in particular, Jews, unlike other peoples, are subject to specific diseases, and their lack of such qualities as impartiality, honesty, disinterestedness, etc., makes them unsuitable for medical practice (see Racism).

Freud's own attitude to his Jewishness was complex and ambiguous. He strongly rejected the possibility of converting to another religion, but did not observe Jewish customs and traditions. For many years he remained a member of the Jewish community of Vienna and the Bnei B'rith lodge in Vienna, but did not share the ideals and goals of Zionism. His last work, published in the year of his death, was the book "Moses and Monotheism", where Judaism is presented as a sublimation of the unconscious sense of guilt of the Jews for the murder by their ancestors of the leader - Moses the Egyptian, who transmitted to the Jews the faith of Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) in the one God, and the rite of circumcision - as a symbol of the prohibition imposed by the father on the attraction of the son to the mother. At the same time, Freud in this work confesses his love for the Jewish people and Judaism, seeing the greatness of the latter in a higher level of spirituality compared to other monotheistic religions that have grown out of it.

In the 1930s Freud was a member of the board of trustees of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but repeatedly expressed regret at the lack of a chair in psychoanalysis. Only 40 years after Freud's death, the Center for the Study and Research of the Problems of Psychoanalysis, bearing the name of Freud, was created at the university.

Freud S., 1856-1939). An outstanding physician and psychologist, the founder of psychoanalysis. F. was born in the Moravian city of Freiburg. In 1860, the family moved to Vienna, where he graduated from the gymnasium with honors, then entered the medical faculty of the university and in 1881 received a doctorate in medicine.

F. dreamed of devoting himself to theoretical research in the field of neurology, but was forced to go into private practice as a neurologist. He was not satisfied with the physiotherapy procedures used at that time for the treatment of neurological patients, and he turned to hypnosis. Under the influence of medical practice, F. developed an interest in mental disorders of a functional nature. In 1885-1886. he attended the Charcot J. M. clinic in Paris, where hypnosis was used in the study and treatment of hysterical patients. In 1889 - a trip to Nancy and acquaintance with the work of another french school hypnosis. This trip contributed to the fact that F. had an idea about the basic mechanism of functional mental illness, about the presence of mental processes that, being outside the sphere of consciousness, influence behavior, and the patient himself does not know about it.

The decisive moment in the formation of the original theory of F. was the departure from hypnosis as a means of penetration to the forgotten experiences that underlie neuroses. In many, and just the most severe cases, hypnosis remained powerless, as it encountered resistance that it could not overcome. F. was forced to look for other ways to pathogenic affects and eventually found them in the interpretation of dreams, freely floating associations, small and large psychopathological manifestations, excessively increased or decreased sensitivity, movement disorders, slips of the tongue, forgetting, etc. drew on the phenomenon of the patient transferring feelings to the doctor that took place in early childhood in relation to significant persons.

F. called the study and interpretation of this diverse material psychoanalysis - original form psychotherapy and research method. The core of psychoanalysis as new psychological direction is the doctrine of the unconscious.

Scientific activity F. covers several decades, during which his concept has undergone significant changes, which gives grounds for the conditional allocation of three periods.

In the first period, psychoanalysis largely remained a method of treating neuroses, with occasional attempts at general conclusions about the nature of mental life. Such works by F. of this period as "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900), "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901) have not lost their significance. F. considered the suppressed sexual desire - "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905) - to be the main motivating force in human behavior. At this time, psychoanalysis began to gain popularity, around F. there was a circle of representatives of various professions (doctors, writers, artists) who wanted to study psychoanalysis (1902). F.'s extension of the facts obtained in the study of psychoneuroses to the understanding of mental life healthy people received a very critical response.

In the second period, the concept of F. turned into a general psychological doctrine of the personality and its development. In 1909, he lectured in the United States, which was then published as a complete, albeit brief, presentation of psychoanalysis - "On Psychoanalysis: Five Lectures" (1910). The most widespread work is the "Introduction to Psychoanalysis Lectures", the first two volumes of which are a record of lectures delivered to physicians in 1916-1917.

In the third period, the teachings of F. - Freudianism - underwent significant changes and received its philosophical completion. Psychoanalytic theory has become the basis for understanding culture, religion, civilization. The doctrine of instincts was supplemented by ideas about the attraction to death, destruction - "Beyond the principle of pleasure" (1920). These ideas, received by F. in the treatment of wartime neuroses, led him to the conclusion that wars are the result of the death instinct, that is, due to human nature. The description of the three-component model of human personality - "I and It" (1923) belongs to the same period.

Thus, F. developed a number of hypotheses, models, concepts that captured the originality of the psyche and firmly entered the arsenal of scientific knowledge about it. In a circle scientific analysis phenomena were involved that traditional academic psychology is not accustomed to taking into account.

After the occupation of Austria by the Nazis, F. was persecuted. international union psychoanalytic societies, having paid the fascist authorities in the form of a ransom a significant amount of money, he obtained permission for F. to leave for England. In England he was greeted enthusiastically, but F.'s days were numbered. He died on 23 September 1939 at the age of 83 in London.

FREUD Sigmund

1856–1939) was an Austrian neuropathologist and founder of psychoanalysis. Born May 6, 1856 in Freiberg (now Příbor), located near the border of Moravia and Silesia, about two hundred and forty kilometers northeast of Vienna. Seven days later, the boy was circumcised and given two names - Shlomo and Sigismund. He inherited the Hebrew name Shlomo from his grandfather, who died two and a half months before the birth of his grandson. Only at the age of sixteen did the young man change his name Sigismund to the name Sigmund.

His father Jacob Freud married Amalia Natanson, Freud's mother, being much older than her and having two sons from his first marriage, one of whom was the same age as Amalia. By the time their first child was born, Freud's father was 41 years old, while his mother was three months away from turning 21. Over the next ten years, seven children were born in the Freud family - five daughters and two sons, one of whom died a few months after his birth, when Sigismund was less than two years old.

Due to a number of circumstances related to economic decline, the growth of nationalism and the futility of further life in small town, the Freud family moved in 1859 to Leipzig, and then a year later to Vienna. In the capital Austrian Empire Freud lived for almost 80 years.

During this time, he brilliantly graduated from the gymnasium, in 1873 at the age of 17 he entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, from which he graduated in 1881, receiving a medical degree. For several years, Freud worked at the E. Brücke Physiological Institute and the Vienna City Hospital. In 1885-1886, he completed a six-month internship in Paris with the famous French physician J. Charcot at the Salpêtrière. Upon his return from the internship, he married Martha Bernays, eventually becoming the father of six children - three daughters and three sons.

Having opened a private practice in 1886, Z. Freud used various ways treatment of nervous patients and put forward his understanding of the origin of neuroses. In the 1990s, he laid the foundations for a new method of research and treatment called psychoanalysis. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he developed the psychoanalytic ideas put forward by him.

Over the next two decades, S. Freud made further contributions to the theory and technique of classical psychoanalysis, used his ideas and methods of treatment in private practice, wrote and published numerous works devoted to refining his initial ideas about the unconscious drives of a person and the use of psychoanalytic ideas in various fields. knowledge.

Z. Freud received international recognition, was friends and corresponded with such prominent figures of science and culture as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Romain Rolland, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig and many others.

In 1922 the University of London and the Jewish historical society organized a series of lectures on five famous Jewish philosophers, including Freud along with Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Einstein. In 1924, the Vienna City Council awarded Z. Freud the title of honorary citizen. On his seventieth birthday, he received congratulatory telegrams and letters from all over the world. In 1930 he was awarded literary prize the name of Goethe. In honor of his seventy-fifth birthday, a memorial plaque was erected in Freiberg on the house in which he was born.

On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of S. Freud, Thomas Mann read out his address to the Academic Society medical psychology. The appeal had about two hundred signatures. famous writers and artists including Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hess, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells.

Z. Freud was elected an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the French Psychoanalytic Society, and the British Royal Medical Psychological Association. He was given the official title of Corresponding Member Royal Society.

After the Nazi invasion of Austria in March 1938, the life of S. Freud and his family was in danger. The Nazis seized the library of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, visited the house of Z. Freud, conducted a thorough search there, confiscated his bank account, and summoned his children Martin and Anna Freud to the Gestapo.

With help and support from american ambassador in France, the U.S. Bullitt, Princess Marie Bonaparte and other influential persons Z. Freud received permission to leave and at the beginning of June 1938 left Vienna in order to move to London via Paris.

Z. Freud spent the last year and a half of his life in England. In the very first days of his stay in London, he was visited by HG Wells, Bronislaw Malinowski, Stefan Zweig, who brought Salvador Dali with him, secretaries of the Royal Society, acquaintances, friends. Despite advanced age, development cancer, first discovered in him in April 1923, accompanied by numerous operations and steadfastly tolerated by him for 16 years, Z. Freud carried out almost daily analyzes of patients and continued to work on his handwritten materials.

On September 21, 1938, Z. Freud asked his attending physician Max Schur to fulfill the promise that he had given him ten years ago at their first meeting. In order to avoid unbearable suffering, M. Schur twice injected his famous patient with a small dose of morphine, which turned out to be sufficient for a worthy death of the founder of psychoanalysis. On September 23, 1939, Z. Freud died without knowing that a few years later, his four sisters, who remained in Vienna, would be burned in a crematorium by the Nazis.

From the pen of Z. Freud came out not only a variety of works on the technique of medical use of psychoanalysis, but also such books as The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Wit and its relation to the unconscious (1905), "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), "Delirium and Dreams in Gradiva" by W. Jensen (1907), "Memories of Leonardo da Vinci" (1910), "Totem and Taboo" (1913) , Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1916/17), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Human Self (1921), Self and It (1923), Inhibition, Symptom and Fear (1926), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928), Dissatisfaction with Culture (1930), Moses the Man and Monotheistic Religion (1938) and others.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the small Austrian town of Freiberg, Moravia (in present-day Czech Republic). He was the eldest of seven children in his family, although his father, a wool merchant, had two sons from a previous marriage and was already a grandfather by the time Sigmund was born. When Freud was four years old, his family moved to Vienna due to financial difficulties. Freud lived permanently in Vienna, and in 1938, a year before his death, he emigrated to England.

From the very first classes, Freud studied brilliantly. Despite limited financial means, forcing the whole family to huddle in a cramped apartment, Freud had his own room and even an oil-wick lamp, which he used during classes. The rest of the family was content with candles. Like other young people of that time, he received classical education: studied Greek and Latin, read the great classical poets, playwrights and philosophers - Shakespeare, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. His love of reading was so strong that the bookshop's debts were skyrocketing, which did not arouse sympathy from his father, who was constrained by means. Freud had an excellent command of the German language and at one time received prizes for his literary victories. He was also fluent in French, English, Spanish and Italian.

Freud recalled that as a child he often dreamed of becoming a general or a minister. However, since he was Jewish, almost any professional career was closed to him, with the exception of medicine and law - so strong were anti-Semitic sentiments then. Freud chose medicine reluctantly. He entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna in 1873. During his studies, he was influenced by famous psychologist Ernst Brucke. Brücke put forward the idea that living organisms are dynamic energy systems that obey the laws physical universe. Freud took these ideas seriously, and they were later developed in his views on the dynamics of mental functioning.

Ambition impelled Freud to make some discovery that would have brought him fame already in student years. He contributed to science by describing new properties of nerve cells in goldfish, as well as confirming the existence of testicles in male eels. However, his most important discovery was that cocaine could be used in the treatment of many diseases. He himself used cocaine without any negative consequences and predicted the role of this substance as almost a panacea, not to mention its effectiveness as an anesthetic. Later, when the existence of cocaine addiction became known, Freud's enthusiasm waned.

After receiving his medical degree in 1881, Freud took a position at the Institute of Brain Anatomy and conducted comparative studies adult and fetal brain. He was never attracted to practical medicine, but he soon left his position and began to practice privately as a neuropathologist, mainly because scientific work was poorly paid, and the atmosphere of anti-Semitism did not allow for promotion. On top of that, Freud fell in love and was forced to realize that if he ever got married, he would need a well-paid job.

The year 1885 marked a critical turning point in Freud's career. He received a research fellowship which enabled him to travel to Paris and study for four months with Jean Charcot, one of the most eminent neurologists of the time. Charcot studied the causes and treatment of hysteria, a mental disorder that manifested itself in a wide variety of somatic problems. Patients suffering from hysteria experienced symptoms such as paralysis of the limbs, blindness and deafness. Charcot, using suggestion in a hypnotic state, could both induce and eliminate many of these hysterical symptoms. Although Freud later rejected the use of hypnosis as a therapeutic method, Charcot's lectures and his clinical demonstrations made a strong impression on him. During a short stay at the famous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, Freud went from neurologist to psychopathologist.

In 1886, Freud married Martha Bernays, with whom they lived together for more than half a century. They had three daughters and three sons. The youngest daughter, Anna, followed in the footsteps of her father and eventually took a leading position in psychoanalytic direction as a child psychoanalyst. In the 1980s, Freud began to collaborate with Joseph Breuer, one of the most famous Viennese doctors. Breuer had by this time achieved some success in the treatment of patients with hysteria through the use of the method of free stories of patients about their symptoms. Breuer and Freud undertook a joint study psychological reasons hysteria and methods of treatment of this disease. Their work culminated in the publication of Studies in Hysteria (1895), in which they concluded that repressed memories of traumatic events were the cause of hysterical symptoms. The date of this landmark publication is sometimes associated with the founding of psychoanalysis, but the most creative period in Freud's life was yet to come.

The personal and professional relationship between Freud and Breuer came to an abrupt end around the same time that Studies in Hysteria was published. The reasons why colleagues suddenly became implacable enemies are still not entirely clear. Freud's biographer Ernest Jones argues that Breuer strongly disagreed with Freud on the role of sexuality in the etiology of hysteria, and this predetermined the break (Jones, 1953). Other researchers suggest that Breuer acted as a "father figure" for the younger Freud and his elimination was simply destined by the very course of the development of relations due to Freud's Oedipus complex. Whatever the reasons, the two people never met again as friends.

Freud's claims that sexuality was at the root of hysteria and other mental disorders led to his expulsion from the Vienna medical society in 1896. By this time, Freud had very little, if any, development of what later came to be known as the theory of psychoanalysis. Moreover, his estimate self and Jones' observational work was this: "I have rather limited abilities or talents - I am not strong in the natural sciences, or in mathematics, or in arithmetic. But what I have, albeit in a limited form, is probably developed very intensively.

The interval between 1896 and 1900 was for Freud a period of loneliness, but a very productive loneliness. At this time, he begins to analyze his dreams, and after the death of his father in 1896, he practices introspection for half an hour before going to bed every day. His most outstanding work The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is based on an analysis of one's own dreams. However, fame and recognition were still far away. To begin with, this masterpiece was ignored by the psychiatric community, and Freud received only a royalties of $209 for his work. It may seem incredible, but over the next eight years he managed to sell only 600 copies of this publication.

In the five years since the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud's prestige has grown so much that he has become one of the world's renowned physicians. In 1902, the Psychological Environments Society was founded, attended only by a select circle of Freud's intellectual followers. In 1908, this organization was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Many of Freud's colleagues who were members of this society became well-known psychoanalysts, each in his own direction: Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Hans Sachs, and Otto Rank. Later, Adler, Jung, and Rank emerged from the ranks of Freud's followers to head competing schools of thought.

The period from 1901 to 1905 became especially creative. Freud published several works, including The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), and Humor and its Relation to the Unconscious (1905). In "Three Essays ..." Freud suggested that children are born with sexual urges, and their parents appear as the first sexual objects. Public outrage followed immediately and had a wide resonance. Freud was branded as a sexually perverted, obscene and immoral person. Many medical institutions were boycotted due to their tolerance of Freud's ideas about the sexual life of children.

In 1909, an event took place that moved the psychoanalytic movement from the dead center of relative isolation and opened the way for it to international recognition. G. Stanley Hall invited Freud to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts to give a series of lectures. The lectures were very well received, and Freud was awarded an honorary doctorate. At the time, his future looked very promising. He achieved considerable fame, patients from all over the world signed up for him for consultations. But there were also problems. First of all, he lost almost all his savings in 1919 due to the war. In 1920, his 26-year-old daughter died. But perhaps the most difficult test for him was the fear for the fate of his two sons who fought at the front. Partly influenced by the atmosphere of the First World War and the new wave of anti-Semitism, at the age of 64, Freud created the theory of a universal human instinct - the desire for death. However, despite his pessimism about the future of mankind, he continued to clearly articulate his ideas in new books. The most important are Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1920), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), I and It (1923), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Those Dissatisfied with It ( 1930), New Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1933) and Outline of Psychoanalysis, published posthumously in 1940. Freud was an exceptionally gifted writer, as evidenced by his award of the Goethe Prize for Literature in 1930.

The First World War had a huge impact on the life and ideas of Freud. Working in a clinic with hospitalized soldiers expanded his understanding of the variety and subtlety of psychopathological manifestations. The rise of anti-Semitism in the 1930s also had a strong influence on his views on social nature person. In 1932, he was a constant target for attacks by the Nazis (in Berlin, the Nazis staged several public burnings of his books). Freud commented on these events as follows: “What progress! In the Middle Ages they would burn me myself, but now they are content with burning my books. It was only through the diplomatic efforts of influential citizens of Vienna that he was allowed to leave that city shortly after the Nazi invasion in 1938.

The last years of Freud's life were difficult. Since 1923, he suffered from a spreading cancerous tumor of the pharynx and jaw (Freud smoked 20 Cuban cigars daily), but stubbornly refused drug therapy, with the exception of small doses of aspirin. He worked hard despite undergoing 33 major surgeries to stop the tumor from spreading (which forced him to wear an uncomfortable prosthesis that filled the gap between his nose and mouth, making him unable to speak at times). Another test of endurance awaited him: during the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, his daughter Anna was arrested by the Gestapo. It was only by chance that she managed to free herself and reunite with her family in England.

Freud died on September 23, 1939 in London, where he ended up as a displaced Jewish emigrant. For those who wish to learn more about his life, we recommend the three-volume biography written by his friend and colleague Ernest Jones, The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud. Published in England, an edition of the collected works of Freud in twenty-four volumes has been distributed throughout the world.

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Sigmund Freud(full name - Sigismund Shlomo Freud) is an Austrian psychologist, neurologist and psychiatrist. He is credited with founding psychoanalysis - a theory about the characteristics of human behavior and the causes of this behavior.

In 1930 Sigmund Freud was awarded Goethe Prize, it was then that his theories were recognized by society, although they remained "revolutionary" for that period of time.

short biography

Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856 in the Austrian town of Freiberg (modern Czech Republic), whose population numbered about 4,500 people.

His father - Jacob Freud, was married a second time, from his first marriage he had two sons. He was a textile merchant. Sigmund's mother Natalie Natanson She was half her father's age.

In 1859 due to the forced closure of the business of the head of the family, the Freud family moved first to Leipzig and then to Vienna. Zygmund Shlomo was 4 years old at that time.

Study period

At first, Sigmund was raised by his mother, but soon his father took up this, who wanted a better future for him and in every possible way instilled in his son a love of literature. He succeeded and Freud Jr. kept this love until the end of his life.

Studying at the gymnasium

Diligence and ability to learn allowed Sigmund to enter the gymnasium at the age of 9 - a year earlier than usual. At that time he already had 7 siblings. Parents singled out Sigmund for his talent and desire to learn everything new. Up to the point that the rest of the children were forbidden to play music when he was studying in a separate room.

At the age of 17, the young talent graduated from the gymnasium with honors. By that time, he was fond of literature and philosophy, and also knew several languages: German perfectly, English, French, Italian, Spanish, studied Latin and Greek.

Needless to say, for the entire period of study, he was the student number 1 in his class.

Choice of profession

Further education for Sigmund Freud was limited due to his Jewish background. The choice was left to him commerce, industry, medicine or law. After some thought he chose medicine and entered the University of Vienna in 1873.

At the university, he began to study chemistry and anatomy. However, most of all he liked psychology and physiology. Partly due to the fact that at the university lectures on these subjects were given by the famous Ernst von Brucke.

Sigmund was also impressed by the popular zoologist Karl Claus with whom he subsequently carried out research work. During his time under Klaus "Freud quickly distinguished himself from other students, which enabled him twice, in 1875 and 1876, to become a fellow of the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste."

After university

Being a rationally thinking person and setting himself the goal of achieving a position in society and material independence, Sigmund in 1881 opened a doctor's office and took up the treatment of psychoneuroses. Shortly thereafter, he began to use cocaine for medicinal purposes, first trying its effects on himself.

Colleagues looked askance at him, some called him an adventurer. Subsequently, it became clear to him that neuroses could not be cured from cocaine, but getting used to it was quite simple. Freud cost great work give up white powder and win the authority of a pure doctor and scientist.

First successes

In 1899 Sigmund Freud published a book "The Interpretation of Dreams", which caused a negative reaction in society. She was ridiculed in the press, some of her colleagues did not want to have anything to do with Freud. But the book aroused great interest abroad: in France, England, America. Gradually, the attitude towards Dr. Freud changed, his stories won more and more supporters among doctors.

Getting acquainted with an increasing number of patients, mostly women, who complained of various ailments and disorders, using hypnosis methods, Freud built his theory about unconscious mental activity and determined that neurosis is defensive reaction psyche to a traumatic idea.

Later, he put forward a hypothesis about the special role of unsatisfied sexuality in the development of neurosis. Observing the behavior of a person, his actions - especially bad ones, Freud came to the conclusion that unconscious motives lie at the heart of people's actions.

Theory of the Unconscious

Trying to find these very unconscious motives - the possible causes of neuroses, he drew attention to the unsatisfied desires of a person in the past, which lead to personality conflicts in the present. These alien emotions seem to cloud the mind. They were interpreted by him as the main evidence the existence of the unconscious.

In 1902, Sigmund was given the position of professor of neuropathology at the University of Vienna, and a year later he became the organizer "First International Psychoanalytic Congress". But international recognition of his merits came to him only in 1930, when the city of Frankfurt am Main awarded him Goethe Prize.

last years of life

Unfortunately, the subsequent life of Sigmund Freud was filled with tragic events. In 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany, Jews began to be persecuted, Freud's books were burned in Berlin. Further worse - he himself ended up in the Vienna ghetto, and his sisters in a concentration camp. Nevertheless, they managed to rescue him, in 1938 he and his family left for London. But he had only a year to live: he suffered from oral cancer caused by smoking.

September 23, 1939 Sigmund Freud was injected with several cubes of morphine, a dose sufficient to end the life of a man weakened by disease. He died at 3 o'clock in the morning at the age of 83, his body was cremated, and the ashes were placed in a special Etruscan vase, which is stored in the mausoleum Golders Green.