Akademik

(1856–1939)

Viennese founder of psychoanalysis . Freud was born in Freiburg and educated in Vienna. His first work was in biology and clinical neurology; it was after study with Charcot in Paris that he turned his attention to an interest in hypnosis. In Vienna he collaborated with Breuer, who championed a method of having the patient re-live the stressful experiences responsible for his or her neuroses. However, it was Freud who postulated that an active process of repression needed confronting and disarming, and who extended the range of experiences involved to concentrate upon traumatizing experiences remembered or imagined from early childhood. In spite of the influence of psychoanalysis as a framework for psychological and social thought, Freud's handling of some of his most famous cases has attracted increasing scepticism, with it becoming apparent that he himself invented many of the scenes his patients were supposed to have recounted as memory or fantasy. Nevertheless his model for the dynamics of the mind (see ego ) has been a potent influence on many philosophers, and of course on the culture in general.