Sigmund Freud Essay -- Freud Psychologist Biography Essays

Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud was the first major social scientist to propose a corporate theory to understand and explain human behavior. No theory that has followed has been more than complete, more complex, or more controversial. Some psychologists treat Freuds writings as a sacred text - if Freud said it, it must be true. On the other hand, many have accused Freud of being unscientific, proposing theories that are in any case complex ever to be proved true or false. He revolutionized ideas on how the human mind works and the theory that unconscious motives defend much behavior. He applied himself to a new field of report cardand struggled with an environment whose rejection of his work endangered his livelihood and that of his family (Freud 3). His work greatly meliorate the fields of psychiatry and psychology and helped millions of psychogenicly ill patients.Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, a region now in the Czechoslovakian Republic. His father was a wool merchant and was forty when he had Sigmund, the oldest of eighter children (Gay 78). When Freud turned four, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. after(prenominal) graduating from the Spree Gymnasium, Freud was inspired by an try written by Goethe on nature, to make medicine as his career. After graduating from the medical school of the University of Vienna in 1881, Freud decided to specialize in neurology, the guide and treatment of disorders of the nervous system (Gay 79). In 1885, Freud went to Paris to study under Jean Martin Charcot, a famous neurologist. Charcot was working with patients who suffered from a mental illness called hysteria. Some of these stack appeared to be blind or paralyzed, and they actually had no physical defects. Charcot found that their physical symptoms could be improve through hypnosis (Garcia 209). Freud returned to Vienna in 1886 and began to work extensively with hysterical patients. succession discussing the case history of one patient, Freud said, In the study of hysteria, local diagnosing and electrical reactions do not come into picture, while an exhaustive invoice of mental processes, of the kind we were accustomed to having from imaginative writers, enables me, by the application of a few psychological formulas, to obtain a kind of insight into the ancestry of a hysteria (Freud 15).He gradually formed ideas about the crinkle and treatment of mental illness. He used t... ...ia 119).Since the 1970s, many scholars and mental wellness professionals have questioned some of Freuds theories. Feminists attacked Freud because he seemed to believe that in some view women were inferior to men. For example, he thought that women had weaker superegos than men and were driven by envy. He also thought that women had penis envy and were jealous of men. Other people challenged the theory that patients memories of early sexual abuse reflected fantasies rather than actual experiences.As a result of such criticism, most scholars and psychoanalysts now take a more balanced approach to Freuds theories. They use the ideas and techniques from Freud that they find most multipurpose without strictly following all of his teachings. No one, however, disputes Freuds enormous influence. Works CitedClark, David. What Freud truly Said. Scholden, N.Y 1995.Freud, Sigmund. The Origin & Development of Psychoanalysis. Henry Regnay, Indiana Press, N.Y 1965.Garcia, Emanuel. Understanding Freud. NYU Press, N.Y 1992.Gay, Peter. Freud, A invigoration Of Our Time. W.W. Norton, N.Y 1988.Macionis, John. Society The Basics. Prentice-Hall, N.J 2000.