Sigmund Freud
- Date Submitted: 01/28/2010 06:29 AM
- Flesch-Kincaid Score: 50.6
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Sigmund Freud's revolutionary ideas have set the standard for modern
psychoanalysis that students of psychology can learn from, and his ideas spread
from the field of medicine to daily living. His studies in areas such as
unconsciousness, dreams, sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and sexual
maladjustments laid the foundation for future studies and a better understanding
of the small things that shape our lives.
In 1873 Freud graduated from the Sperl Gymnasium and, inspired by a
public reading of an essay on nature by Goethe, Freud decided to turn to
medicine as a career(Gay, 10). He worked at the University of Vienna with one
of the leading physiologists of his day, Ernst von Brucke, and in 1882 he entered
the General Hospital in Vienna as a clinical assistant. After making several
conclusions about the brain's medulla, Freud was appointed lecturer in
neuropathology. At this same time in Freud's career, he developed an interest in
the medical uses and benefits of cocaine(Britannica, 582). Even though some
beneficial results were found in some forms of eye surgery, cocaine use was
generally denied by the surgeons of his time. This interest in the narcotic hurt
Freud's medical reputation for a time. This episode in Freud's life has been
looked at as an example of his "willingness to attempt bold solutions to relieve
human suffering(Wittels,98)."
From 1885 to 1886 Freud spent nineteen weeks with Jean Martin
Charcot, a world famous neurologist and the director of a Paris asylum. It was
Charcot that first introduced Freud to the idea of hysteria and hysterics. Freud
became intrigued by the idea of hypnotism as a method of therapy, but he was
told that only hysterics could be treated with hypnotism(Appignanesi, 34). There
was a firm belief that only women could be hysteric and that no man or non-...
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