FREUD, SIGMUND (1856-1939), founder of psycho analysis, was born, of Jewish extraction, at Freiberg in Moravia on May 6, 1856. Since the ale of four he had always lived in Vienna. He felt no inclination towards medical work, being more interested in purely scientific research. Influenced by Goethe's essay Die Natur, however, he embarked on a medical curriculum. In his preliminary studies he was chiefly interested in botany and chemistry. He worked from 1876 to 1882 in the physiological laboratory under Briicke and later in the Institute for Cerebral Anatomy under Meynert. The concurrent medical studies pro gressed slowly and he qualified only in 1881. Financial considera tions compelled him to renounce his research work and he decided to become a clinical neurologist. In 1884 a Viennese physician, Dr. Breuer, related to him an extraordinary experience in which symptoms of hysteria were cured by getting the patient to rec ollect in a state of hypnosis the circumstances of their origin and to express the emotions accompanying this. This "cathartic" method of treatment was the starting-point of what later became psycho-analysis. In 1885 Freud went to Paris to study for over a year under the great neurologist Charcot, whose moral support strengthened his determination in the then revolutionary step of investigating hysteria from a psychological point of view. Just before this he had been made a Docent in Neuropathology for his pathological and clinical investigations. His psychological studies, however, met with immediate disapproval on the part of his colleagues. In the next few years he published important works in neurology, particularly on aphasia and the cerebral paralyses of children.
His interest in clinical psychology continued during these years, and in 1893 he persuaded Breuer to publish his remarkable case and to collaborate with him in a book called Studien fiber Hysterie (1895). In 1894 the partnership dissolved and soon afterwards Freud took the decisive step of replacing hypnotism as a means of resuscitating buried memories by the method of "free associa tion," which is the kernel of the psycho-analytic method. This led him to make important discoveries concerning the structure and nature of the various psychoneuroses and to extend these discoveries to the normal mind. The three most fundamental of these were (I) the existence of the unconscious and the dynamic influence of this on consciousness; (2) the fact that the splitting of the mind into layers is due to an intrapsychical conflict between various sets of forces, to one of which he gave the name of "re pression"; and (3) the existence and importance of infantile sexuality. He came to see in the unconscious conflicts over the young child's sexual attitude toward its parents, which together with the accompanying jealousy and hostility he refers to as the "Oedipus conflict," not only the central factor in the neuroses, but a fundamental contribution to the formation of character in general. The particular mechanisms he had found in the neuroses he demonstrated in detail in many other spheres, such as wit, dreams, literary products, art, mythology and religion. (See PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.) For ten years Freud worked alone at psycho-analysis. About 1906 he was joined by a number of colleagues, Adler, Brill, Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, Jung, Sadger, Stekel and others, who met in 1908 at the first International Congress of Psycho-Analysis, since then a biennial institution. A couple of years later an Inter national Association was founded, which has branches in most countries of the world (the British one dates from 1913) and which maintains three official organs devoted to the subject. The influence of Freud's work, however, extended far beyond the special activities of the Zoo specialists in the subject. It met keen opposition, which he ascribed to the powerful resistance against recognition of the subconscious mind. (E. J.) Freud was elected to the Royal Society in 1936. Despite ad vanced age he continued active work, especially as director of the International Journal of Psychology. In 1938, after Germany's absorption of Austria, he moved to London. In 1939 he published Moses and Monotheism, in which he set out to psychoanalyze anti-Semitism. He died in London, Sept. 23.