Introduction
Such is the magnitude of Freud’s offerings to the nascent disciplines of twentieth century neurology, psychology and psychiatry, rather than a truncated chronology, I have chosen, in this short biography, to present illuminating vignettes of his early life, education and professional career, research interests, and legacy sufficient to stimulate the neophyte’s appetite for further exploration of one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.
Early life
Jung said that psychological theories are disguised forms of autobiography. Unconscious forces influence our conscious thoughts – we need to understand imaginative leaps in great scientists in the light of their developmental history… (Holmes, in Kenny 2014, pp. 144–145)
Details of Freud’s biography might be instructive to our understanding of the development of Freud’s theory of infant sexuality, particularly the Oedipus complex. When Sigmund’s father, Jacob, was 40 years old, he married the third of his three wives,...
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Kenny, D.T. (2020). Freud, Sigmund. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1707
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