Five Fun Facts About Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud – known worldwide as the father of psychoanalysis – is one of the most influential and controversial figures of the twentieth century. He gained his fame partly thanks to his revolutionary and radically new way of not only understanding the mind, mood and behavior of people, but also interpreting them.

Freud’s groundbreaking theories formed the basis of a psychological school and school of thought that in no time occupied a dominant position within the academic, intellectual, and therapeutically oriented circles of the European and North American intelligentsia. His book ‘De dreaminterpretation’, published in 1899, is seen as the axiomatic beginning of the discipline of psychoanalysis.

So while the name may not sound strange to you, there are undoubtedly a lot of things you’ve never heard about him. That is why we present here – in this article – some salient, if less frequently mentioned, facts about this renowned doctor, physiologist, psychologist and philosopher who has so profoundly changed our understanding of and view of the mind.

Sigmund Freud was the eldest in a family of eight children

Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiburg, Moravia (present-day Príbor , in the Czech Republic). His father, Jakob, was a wool merchant and already had two children from a previous marriage. His mother, Amalia, was no less than twenty years younger than her husband. The bankruptcy of the family business forced them – parents and offspring – to move to Vienna.

Although he had a total of seven siblings, Freud often described himself as his mother’s favorite —her darling. That observation, and that fact, turned out to be more important, more meaningful, to him than you might suspect from such an innocent anecdote. For example, during a public affair, he once explicitly suggested the following: ” I have repeatedly observed that people who were the apple of their mother’s eye in (early) childhood – and who knew it – generally had a higher degree later in life. of autonomy, and show a more unwavering optimism than others. And that as a rule, in addition to more self-confidence, they also have considerably more personal and social success. ”

Freud was an advocate, and user, of cocaine

Before the harmful side effects were proven and well documented, cocaine was prescribed as a pain reliever, and as a mood enhancer (due to its euphoria-inducing effect). It was even added to the recipes of widely available household products, soft drinks and throat lozenges. Freud was primarily interested in cocaine for its potential ability to relieve the symptoms of depression, further defending its use for a variety of purposes.

At that time, cocaine – as hard as it may be today – was still seen as a kind of panacea for all kinds of ailments, including chronic pain. As soon as the highly addictive and, in fact, disastrous physiological side effects of cocaine use in the medical world were officially re-recognized, Freud had a hard time: he had become addicted himself, and his reputation as a doctor – partly because of this – was immediately seriously damaged. discredited.

Above all, Freud became a doctor in order to marry the woman he loved

At twenty-six, Freud fell madly in love with a twenty-one-year-old young beauty named Martha Bernays, and about two months after their first meeting, they began a relationship. But Freud was a poor student who still lived with his parents, and his salary as a researcher in the university laboratory was largely insufficient to support a family.

Six months after he met Martha, he deliberately said goodbye to his scientific career and decided to study medicine. During three years of intensive training at the Vienna Community Hospital, he hardly had the opportunity to visit his girlfriend, who had also left for Germany. After waiting – all together – for four years, they could finally get married, live together and live together. The couple had six children. Historians claim that Freud had an affair with his sister-in-law, from Minna.

Freud developed talk therapy

Although Freud’s underlying assumptions are today widely criticized and even rejected by psychotherapists, most of them – in the and their practice – still use the methods originally introduced and modeled by him. Psychoanalytic therapy, more commonly known as ‘talk therapy’, plays a key role in the approach and approach of contemporary analysts, and has been incorporated as a crucial element in many modern therapeutic contexts and settings.

This talk therapy aims to bring certain sub- or unconscious patterns, and significant, memory-suppressed events, back into the spotlight, in order to better understand and – hopefully – solve the patient and their problems. Psychoanalysts believe that (fixed) childhood memories – thoughts, feelings, and implicit beliefs – play a decisive role in (the development of) psychological disorders and in maladaptive, antisocial or (self) destructive behavior.

Freud left Vienna because of the Nazis

When Hitler’s troops invaded Austria, countless books were burned—including Freud’s, and a host of other famous thinkers. His take on this whole tragedy was, to say the least, curious. The story goes that at one point – in this context – he said to a friend: “ We are making progress. In the Middle Ages I would have been burned alive. Now they are content to burn my books .”

Freud and his daughter Anna were literally subjected to a Gestapo interrogation, but thanks to her friend – Marie Bonaparte – she was able to arrange a safe passage in time for herself and her celebrated father. Bonaparte also tried to save Freud’s four younger sisters, but was unsuccessful. All four died in the infamous concentration camps.

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