
An Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who profoundly changed how humanity understands the unconscious mind and human behavior.
Một nhà thần kinh học người Áo và là người sáng lập phân tâm học, đã thay đổi sâu sắc cách nhân loại hiểu về vô thức và hành vi con người.
This biography of Sigmund Freud helps you learn English through real historical stories. Explore Sigmund Freud's impact on the world.
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, and spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881, initially focusing on neurobiology and the treatment of nervous disorders, such as hysteria. Through his clinical work and collaborations with colleagues like Josef Breuer, Freud began to realize that many of his patients' mental and physical symptoms had no obvious physiological cause. Instead, he hypothesized that these ailments stemmed from deeply buried traumatic memories and repressed emotions hidden within the unconscious mind.
To treat these psychological distresses, Freud developed "psychoanalysis," a revolutionary clinical method centered on dialogue between the patient and the psychoanalyst. In 1899, he published his masterwork, "The Interpretation of Dreams," famously arguing that dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious." He later introduced a structural model of the human psyche, dividing it into three conflicting parts: the primitive "Id" driven by basic desires, the moralizing "Superego," and the rational "Ego" that constantly mediates between the two and the external world.
Freud's theories regarding childhood development and human sexuality were highly controversial during his time, yet they attracted a massive international following. In 1938, following the Nazi annexation of Austria, the elderly Freud was forced to flee Vienna and seek refuge in London, where he died a year later. While modern empirical psychology has rejected or heavily modified many of his specific scientific claims, Freud's profound influence on psychiatry, literature, art, and our everyday vocabulary—introducing terms like "denial," "repression," and "Freudian slip"—remains absolutely undeniable.