Definition for Freud, Sigmund
From Biology Forums Dictionary
Freud, Sigmund (1856 to 1939): Developed psychoanalytic therapy technique, born in Freiburg, Moravia (now Príbor, Czech Republic). He studied medicine at Vienna, then specialized in neurology, and later in psychopathology. Finding hypnosis inadequate, he used the method of "free association," allowing the patient to express thoughts in a state of relaxed consciousness, and interpreting the data of childhood and dream recollections. He became convinced, despite his own puritan sensibilities, of the fact of infantile sexuality, a theory which isolated him from the medical profession. In 1900 he published his major work, Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams), arguing that dreams are disguised manifestations of repressed sexual wishes (in contrast with the widely-held modern view that dreams are simply a biological manifestation of the random firing of brain neurones during a particular state of consciousness). In 1902, he was appointed to a professorship in Vienna. Out of this grew the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society (1908) and the International Psychoanalytic Association (1910).
