Unlocking the Unconscious: Who Was Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychologist and neurologist who founded the school of psychoanalysis. Freud discovered original methods of exploring the unconscious. In the course of his research, he developed the theory of psychosexual development and the structural model of the mind. His contributions laid the foundations for many aspects of modern psychology.

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg of the Austrian Empire. He had seven younger siblings and two step-brothers. His father, Jacob Freud, was a wool merchant who faced excruciating financial challenges. Freud lived in a rented room with his family until they moved to Vienna in 1859 seeking better economic prospects. When Freud was 9 years old, he entered a prestigious high school there, from which he graduated with honors in 1873. Although Freud initially wanted to pursue a career in law, he was drawn to medicine thanks to reading Goaethe’s work on nature at school.

When he was 17, he entered the School of Medicine at the University of Vienna, where he studied under the leading experts of his time. Most notably, he studied philosophy with German philosopher Franz Brentano, and psychology with German physician and psychologist Ernest Brucke. Freud graduated in 1881 with an MD specialized in neurology.

Early Career

Sigmund Freud started working as a clinical assistant at the Vienna General Hospital in 1882. He was very interested in exploring how to alleviate psychological suffering, and neurology was his starting point in this trajectory. Through his research in cerebral anatomy, Freud made important findings on aphasia and the mood-enhancing impacts of cocaine. He experimented with its administration as a psychiatric drug, only to later discover its disastrous side effects. Although this jeopardized his reputation, the fate of his work turned around in 1885 thanks to a 19-week trip to the Salpetriere clinic in Paris, where he worked with French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot with patients suffering from ‘hysteria’.

Charcot used hypnosis as a therapeutic tool to access suppressed traumatic memories in his patients. His work tremendously influenced Freud, as it led him to view mental illness as a byproduct of mental states and not just neuropathology. The role of the unconscious thus became central to Freud’s investigation.

Freud returned to Vienna in February 1886 and started his private therapeutic practice where he set out to treat patients through hypnosis. In the same year, he also started a non-paid position as a lecturer at the University of Vienna that allowed him to share his thoughts as well as conduct independent research. Although Freud’s initial method of exploring the unconscious was hypnosis, he eventually developed other methods that laid the foundations of his work on psychoanalysis. As he observed his patients during therapy sessions, Freud noticed that when his patients expressed themselves without censorship and interruption they exposed thoughts, feelings, and memories that shed light on their unconscious.

Freud developed the method of ‘free association’ as a tool for exploring the unconscious between 1892 and 1898. He encouraged patients to talk without filtering themselves and refrained from asking them questions or interrupting them by sharing his interpretations.

Dreams and the Subconscious

Freud also discovered the role of dreams in exploring the unconscious, leading to the publication of his seminal work in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams. He explained how dream symbols are a gateway to uncovering suppressed desires, memories, and feelings. During the years of Freud’s clinical experience and self-exploration, he developed the structural model of the mind, arguing that the mind has a threefold structure consisting of the id, ego, and superego.

Furthermore, he argued that humans developed through distinct psychosexual stages, including the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital, which he discussed elaborately in Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality (1905). Freud believed that mental illness was a byproduct of developmental disruptions along these stages due to the suppression of the libido. The Oedipus and Electra complexes are characteristics of Freud’s views on psychosexual development, emphasizing the unconscious sexual drives present in child-caregiver relationships.

Freud’s works have shaped modern psychology to a great extent. Most of the concepts propagated by pop psychology were initially discovered by Freud. For instance, he was the first to deeply expound on the devastating impacts of traumas, particularly childhood trauma. He was also the first to discover our unconscious inclination to suppress painful memories as a means of self-protection and coined the term ‘defense mechanisms’. He also studied transference and countertransference in patient-therapist relationships. In 1910, Freud founded the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) to promote the study and development of his theories.

He made sure that the work of the IPA preserved the essential characteristics of his thoughts, particularly after the disagreements he had with Carl Jung, who served as president of the IPA before developing his own theories of the unconscious. Today, the IPA is a leading organization in the field of psychoanalysis whose members continue to walk in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud.