Sigmund Freud 1856-1939: Difference between revisions

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in the small Moravian town of Freiberg, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Czechoslovakia, where he was brought up, much as a country child, until 1859, when the family moved, first and briefly to Leipzip, then to Vienna.<ref>Wollheim, Richard. Sigmund Freud. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1981.1.Print</ref>

''The Life of Sigmund Freud'' says, in the 1870s and 1880s Freud decided he much preferred science to religion. Influenced by Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species, lab work with physiologist Ernst Brucke, and a study of hysterics with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, Freud became convinced that the human body, including the mind, could be rationally explained through the scientific method of observation and analysis. This idea was bolstered by his continued experiments with patients who were suffering from hysterias, or physical symptoms that had no ostensible physical cause. Freud let his patients speak freely in hopes of unlocking their previously repressed thoughts, a process which led him to conclude that stifled sexual feelings were at the root of these illnesses.<ref> PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/twolives/freudbio.html. 2004.accessed April 25, 2014</ref>