Life

Stages of Freud's biography

At first glance, Sigmund Freud's life appears to be a textbook example of a bourgeois existence around 1900. After a happy childhood, a good school education, and medical studies, he took research trips abroad and founded his own practice, laying the foundation for his fame as the father of psychoanalysis.

Yet this is only one half of the story. The other is that Freud long stood alone in advocating his revolutionary theory. There was great resistance to a method that centered on sexuality and the unconscious. His Jewish background also played a role in his isolation. Despite his Austrian citizenship, it often prevented him from getting the scientific and public recognition he deserved, and it almost cost him his life.