Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis, a system of psychological therapy and personality theory that remains one of the most influential and controversial in psychology. Born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today a part of Czechoslovakia), he was the first son of Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, and of Amalie Nathansohn Freud, Jakob's third wife.
Freud's background was Jewish, a fact that figured importantly in his life and work, although he himself was an atheist—in his words, "a Godless Jew"—and was to write withering critiques of religion, which he considered a "psychological narcotic" (see, e.g., Freud, 1927, 1930).
Notwithstanding his birthplace, Freud for all intents and purposes was a Viennese. His family moved to Vienna when he was four, and he remained there until about a year before his death, when he fled Nazi Austria to settle with his family in London. His four sisters, who stayed behind, perished in the Holocaust. In 1886 Freud married Martha Bernays. They had three sons and three daughters, the youngest of whom, Anna, became a prominent figure in the psychoanalytic movement.
Freud, a heavy cigar smoker, tried several times to give up his "vice" but found that he could not write without smoking.
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