Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was the founder of Psychoanalysis: a therapeutic method of unlocking the unconscious depths of behaviour and a radical treatment of neurotic disorders. He was born in Freiburg (now in Czechoslovakia) in 1856 and died in London in 1939. Shortly after his death, W.H. Auden wrote: "if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us Freud is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives." 

Sigmund was the first of eight children born to Jacob and Amalia Freud. When Sigmund was born a membrane known as a caul covered his head and face. Cauls can be removed by midwives without any pain or problems but because it's so rare that babies are born with them, his mother interpreted them as a sign her boy had been chosen for greatness. Famously, Amalia Freud always referred to her son as 'mein goldener Sigi' (my golden Sigi). 

Many of us joke about "Freudian Slips" and are amused by the idea that if someone makes a slip of the tongue, the mistake will have significance and reveal what's really going on in their head. In his book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (published in 1901), Freud used a word called fehlleistung (which roughly translates as the light being shown on the darkness of our unconscious to reveal how things work) and he gives us a few examples to explain his theory. One of his studies is a young man who he hears misquote a line of Latin verse by leaving out the word aliquis (which means someone). Freud asked the young man to play the famous word association game. When the man responded to the word 'Someone' with the word 'blood' Freud asks the chap if this could mean anything and the young man revealed his partner should have had her period but hasn't which causes him anxiety.

One of Freud's major works was, Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality in which he explained the importance of repression and libido and makes the argument sexual life manifests soon after birth rather than when we're going through puberty. His suggestions that there are three zones (Oral, Anal, and Phallic) and that when aged 5 we start to repress Oedipal desires, were obviously highly controversial and Freud was often derided. Freud saw himself as being an adventurer and maybe his greatest strength was his bravery in attempting to break new ground and make new discoveries. In his time, the subject of genitals were not something a gentleman would raise in conversation, but for Freud, the penis was never far from his mind and so therefore had to be talked about. Freud believed that if you dream you are flying it means your body is representing a phallic symbol so you're basically dreaming about a giant flying erection. Freud was a heavy smoker who chomped on 20 cigars a day. Surprise, surprise — Freud suggested this addiction was a substitute to compensate withdrawal symptoms from the excessive masturbation he'd enjoyed so much in his youth. 

At the age of 67 Freud developed cancer of the jaw and, despite many operations, was in physical agony for many years. Freud's final home at 20 Maresfield Gardens in North London is now a museum. During his lifetime Freud was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Medicine twelve times but never won it purely because his many critics believed Psychoanalysis was an unproven practise. Edward de Bono (the psychologist who, in the 1960s pioneered the concept of lateral thinking) said of Freud: "Like it or not, Freud remains an inescapable influence on the way we think about ourselves, and each other, today. We should consider him the master explainer, a phenomenon placed somewhere between poetry and science, and between psychology and magic."

Harry Pye