1865-1939. Austrian psychiatrist who
pioneered study of the unconscious mind. He
developed the methods of free association and
interpretation of dreams that are still
techniques of psychoanalysis. His books
include Die Traumdeutung/The Interpretation
of Dreams 1900, Totem and Taboo 1913, and Das
Unbehagen in der Kultur/Civilization and its
Discontents 1930. Freud studied medicine in
Vienna and was a member of the research team
that discovered the local anaesthetic effects
of cocaine. From 1885-86 he studied hypnosis
in Paris under the French physiologist
Charcot and 1889 in Nancy under two of
Charcot's opponents. From 1886 to 1938 he had
a private practice in Vienna, and his
theories and writings drew largely on case
studies of his own patients. He was also
influenced by the research into hysteria of
the Viennese physician Breuer. In the early
1900s a group of psychoanalysts gathered
around Freud. Some of these later broke away
and formed their own schools: Alfred Adler in
1911 and Carl Jung in 1913. Following the
Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, Freud
left for London, where he died. The word
`psychoanalysis' was, like much of its
terminology, coined by Freud, and many terms
have passed into popular usage, not without
distortion. The way that unconscious forces
influence people's thoughts and actions was
Freud's discovery, and his theory of the
repression of infantile sexuality as the root
of neuroses in the adult (as in the Oedipus
complex) was particularly controversial.
Later he also stressed the significance of
aggressive drives. His work, long accepted as
definitive by many, has been criticized
particularly from a feminist point of view.