Dream Psychology Complete and Unabridged Large Print Edition: Psychoanalysis for Beginners Paperback -

Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in the Czech Republic. A neurologist by training and education, he became the founder of psychoanalysis, a theory to explain the human psyche, a therapy for its illnesses, and ultimately, a framework for the interpretation of culture and society. Freud studied medicine at the University of Vienna. In 1882 he became a clinical assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna, and in 1885 was appointed lecturer in neuropathology. Pursuing his studies in neuropathology in Paris, Freud came to believe that psychological disorders might originate in the mind rather than the brain. Returning to Vienna in 1886 he began a long association with the physician Josef Breuer, employing a methodology in which the patient would talk about the manifestations of symptoms. In the belief that "the talking cure" released a pent-up emotional blockage Freud would eventually arrive at the revolutionary technique of free association, theorizing that by expressing random thoughts that came to mind the patient could uncover material from the unconscious which, because of conflicts with conscious or other unconscious thoughts, was normally unavailable to the conscious mind. Freud called these "blockages" resistance, which when broken down, revealed hidden conflicts. Bringing such conflicts to conscious awareness through free association was a crucial step on the road to relieving the symptoms, which could best be understood as a subconscious compromise between the unconscious desire and the defense. Forced to flee to England when Hitler annexed Austria, Freud's books were among the first to be burned, as corrupt "Jewish science." Freud died on September 23, 1939, in London, but his ideas lived on. A multitude of Freudian schools of thought emerged and developed psychoanalysis along divergent paths, and despite relentless, often compelling and sometimes valid challenges to virtually all of his ideas, the concept of "psychological man" replacing earlier concepts like political or economic man is largely due to the sweep of Freud's vision and the power of his intellectual legacy.