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Sigmund Frued, Austrian physician, neurologist, and founder of psychoanalysis.

Freud was born in Freiberg (now Príbor, Czech Republic), on May 6, 1856, and educated

at the University of Vienna. When he was three years old his family, fleeing from the

anti-Semitic riots then raging in Freiberg, moved to Leipzig. Shortly thereafter, the family

settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life.

Although Freud's ambition from childhood had been a career in law, he decided to

become a medical student shortly before he entered the University of Vienna in 1873.

Inspired by the scientific investigations of the German poet Goethe, Freud was driven by

an intense desire to study natural science and to solve some of the challenging problems

confronting contemporary scientists.

In his third year at the university Freud began research work on the central

nervous system in the physiological laboratory under the direction of the German

physician Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. Neurological research was so engrossing that Freud

neglected the prescribed courses and as a result remained in medical school three years

longer than was required normally to qualify as a physician. In 1881, after completing a

year of compulsory military service, he received his medical degree. Unwilling to give up

his experimental work, however, he remained at the university as a demonstrator in the

physiological laboratory. In 1883, at Brücke's urging, he reluctantly abandoned

theoretical research to gain practical experience.

Freud spent three years at the General Hospital of Vienna, devoting himself

successively to psychiatry, dermatology, and nervous diseases. In 1885, following his

appointment as a lecturer in neuropathology...