In a 1935 postscript to his "Selbstdarstellung" (1925; translated as "An Autobiographical Study," 1927), founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud wrote about the intimate connection between "the story of my life" and "the history of psychoanalysis," while denying the possibility that "personal experiences of mine are of any interest in comparison to my relations with that science." Despite his protestations to the contrary, however, Freud clearly brought much of his life experience not only to his analysis of the individual human psyche but to his contributions to many fields of cultural study: sociology, aesthetics, semiotics, anthropology, philosophy, and even theology.

Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, a small town in Moravia, which is now Pøíbor in the Czech Republic. He was the son of Jakob Freud, a Jewish wool merchant, and his considerably younger second or third wife, Amalia Nathansohn, a Polish Jew. Although the elder...