HomeGroupsTalkZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
MembersReviewsPopularityRatingFavorited   Events   
42,132 (45,546)336384 (3.61)66
Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis, simultaneously a theory of personality, a therapy, and an intellectual movement. He was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Freiburg, Moravia, now part of Czechoslovakia, but then a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the age of 4, he moved to Vienna, where he spent nearly his entire life. In 1873 he entered the medical school at the University of Vienna and spent the following eight years pursuing a wide range of studies, including philosophy, in addition to the medical curriculum. After graduating, he worked in several clinics and went to Paris to study under Jean-Martin Charcot, a neurologist who used hypnosis to treat the symptoms of hysteria. When Freud returned to Vienna and set up practice as a clinical neurologist, he found orthodox therapies for nervous disorders ineffective for most of his patients, so he began to use a modified version of the hypnosis he had learned under Charcot. Gradually, however, he discovered that it was not necessary to put patients into a deep trance; rather, he would merely encourage them to talk freely, saying whatever came to mind without self-censorship, in order to bring unconscious material to the surface, where it could be analyzed. He found that this method of free association very often evoked memories of traumatic events in childhood, usually having to do with sex. This discovery led him, at first, to assume that most of his patients had actually been seduced as children by adult relatives and that this was the cause of their neuroses; later, however, he changed his mind and concluded that his patients' memories of childhood seduction were fantasies born of their childhood sexual desires for adults. (This reversal is a matter of some controversy today.) Out of this clinical material he constructed a theory of psychosexual development through oral, anal, phallic and genital stages. Freud considered his patients' dreams and his own to be "the royal road to the unconscious." In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), perhaps his most brilliant book, he theorized that dreams are heavily disguised expressions of deep-seated wishes and fears and can give great insight into personality. These investigations led him to his theory of a three-part structure of personality: the id (unconscious biological drives, especially for sex), the superego (the conscience, guided by moral principles), and the ego (the mediator between the id and superego, guided by reality). Freud's last years were plagued by severe illness and the rise of Nazism, which regarded psychoanalysis as a "Jewish pollution." Through the intervention of the British and U.S. governments, he was allowed to emigrate in 1938 to England, where he died 15 months later, widely honored for his original thinking. His theories have had a profound impact on psychology, anthropology, art, and literature, as well as on the thinking of millions of ordinary people about their own lives. Freud's daughter Anna Freud was the founder of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, where her specialty was applying psychoanalysis to children. Her major work was The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936). (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from Civilization and Its Discontents… (more)
Civilization and Its Discontents 5,363 copies, 41 reviews
The Interpretation of Dreams 5,024 copies, 46 reviews
The Future of an Illusion 1,651 copies, 15 reviews
Totem and Taboo 1,489 copies, 12 reviews
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Author) 1,372 copies, 6 reviews
The Ego and the Id 995 copies, 6 reviews
Moses and Monotheism 898 copies, 4 reviews
The Freud Reader 867 copies, 5 reviews
Beyond the Pleasure Principle 838 copies, 9 reviews
An Outline of Psychoanalysis 632 copies, 4 reviews
On Dreams 611 copies, 6 reviews
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Author) 610 copies, 3 reviews
Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 518 copies, 2 reviews
Studies in Hysteria 470 copies, 2 reviews
Three Case Histories 449 copies, 2 reviews
The Uncanny (Penguin Classics) 380 copies, 2 reviews
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety 252 copies, 2 reviews
The Freud/Jung Letters 227 copies, 1 review
On Metapsychology 184 copies, 2 reviews
An Autobiographical Study 180 copies, 2 reviews
The Psychology of Love 143 copies, 1 review
Art and Literature 134 copies, 1 review
Why War? 130 copies, 2 reviews
A Young Girl's Diary (Foreword) 125 copies, 3 reviews
The Schreber Case 122 copies, 2 reviews
Cocaine papers 96 copies
Deviant Love 85 copies
Sigmund Freud Selected Writings (Author) 79 copies, 1 review
The Wolfman 75 copies
Therapy and Technique 74 copies, 1 review
The Wolf-Man 69 copies
Obras Completas. 26 Volumenes 28 copies, 1 review
Il sogno 23 copies
Obras completas 19 copies, 4 reviews
La psicoanalisi 18 copies
Opere 1886-1905 15 copies
Correspondence 15 copies, 1 review
Casi clinici 15 copies, 1 review
La histeria 15 copies, 1 review
Opere 1905/1921 13 copies
Paranoia y neurosis obsesiva 13 copies, 1 review
Ensayos sobre sexualidad 11 copies, 1 review
Sexualleben 10 copies
Three Contemporary Theories 10 copies, 1 review
Epistolario 8 copies
Psychoanalyse 8 copies
Psychanalyse 7 copies
Psykoanalyse 6 copies
Werken 6 copies
Essays. 5 copies
Lo siniestro 5 copies
Opere 4 copies
Briefwechsel 4 copies
Opere scelte 4 copies
Metapsykologi 3 copies
Escritos Sobre Literatura 3 copies, 1 review
Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers (5 Vol) (Author) 3 copies, 1 review
Névrose et psychose 3 copies, 1 review
フロイト 3 copies
Briefe 3 copies
Esszék 3 copies
Repression 3 copies, 1 review
Hvorfor krig? 2 copies
L'inconscient 2 copies
Ziektegeschiedenissen 2 copies, 1 review
Du masochisme 2 copies
Neurosenlehre 2 copies
Fetischismus 2 copies
Dreams and psychoanalysis (Author) 2 copies
Despre vis 1 copy
Moses 1 copy
Epistolario I 1 copy, 1 review
Epistolario II 1 copy, 1 review
Alomfejtes 1 copy
Making Freud more Freudian (Associated Name) 1 copy
Endişe 1 copy
Opere 1 copy
Psikanaliz 1 copy
Le lapsus 1 copy
Gesammelte Werke XVI 1 copy, 1 review
Opere I 1 copy
Sul sogno 1 copy
Charcot 1 copy
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (Contributor, some editions) 882 copies, 7 reviews
The Sandman (Contributor, some editions) 567 copies, 16 reviews
Critical Theory Since Plato (Contributor, some editions) 386 copies, 1 review
Criticism: Major Statements (Contributor) 209 copies
Western Philosophy: An Anthology (Author, some editions) 173 copies
God (Hackett Readings in Philosophy) (Contributor, some editions) 54 copies
Ritual : psycho-analytic studies (Preface, some editions) 30 copies

Top members (books)

Member favorites

20th century (265) anthology (248) anthropology (151) Austria (80) biography (100) civilization (67) classic (74) classics (104) critical theory (70) dreams (342) essay (90) essays (125) fiction (147) Freud (1,790) German (214) history (126) literary criticism (116) literature (237) new-lifetime-reading-plan (76) non-fiction (1,709) own (92) philosophy (1,134) poetry (90) psych (105) psychiatry (223) psychoanalysis (3,948) psychology (5,963) psychotherapy (81) read (169) reference (83) religion (411) science (164) sexuality (192) Sigmund Freud (258) sociology (143) textbook (79) theory (301) to-read (905) translation (103) unread (126)

Member ratings

Average: (3.61)
0.5 11
1 123
1.5 21
2 270
2.5 73
3 913
3.5 186
4 1178
4.5 74
5 708

Author pictures (6)

    

(see all 6 author pictures)

Improve this author

Combine/separate works

Author division

Sigmund Freud is currently considered a "single author." If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author.

Includes

Sigmund Freud is composed of 40 names. You can examine and separate out names.

Combine with…

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 188,635,167 books! | Top bar: Always visible