freud intellectual biography

Save $8.48 (28%)

Freud: An Intellectual Biography

The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him. The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion.

There are no customer reviews for this item yet.

Classic Totes

Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more!

Shipping & Pickup

We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail!

Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club!

Join our Signed First Edition Club (or give a gift subscription) for a signed book of great literary merit, delivered to you monthly.

Harvard Square's Independent Bookstore

© 2024 Harvard Book Store All rights reserved

Contact Harvard Book Store 1256 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138

Tel (617) 661-1515 Toll Free (800) 542-READ Email [email protected]

View our current hours »

Join our bookselling team »

We plan to remain closed to the public for two weeks, through Saturday, March 28 While our doors are closed, we plan to staff our phones, email, and harvard.com web order services from 10am to 6pm daily.

Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 9am - 11pm Sunday: 10am - 10pm

Holiday Hours 12/24: 9am - 7pm 12/25: closed 12/31: 9am - 9pm 1/1: 12pm - 11pm All other hours as usual.

Map Find Harvard Book Store »

Online Customer Service Shipping » Online Returns » Privacy Policy »

Harvard University harvard.edu »

• Clubs & Services

• GBP USD EUR

Freud: An Intellectual Biography - Joel Whitebook

The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him.

The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: July 2020

Format: Paperback

Dimensions: 15.54 x 2.54 x 22.56 cm

More in this Collection

You also Viewed

• Delivery Information
• Why shop at the Freud Museum?
• Returns & Refunds
• Privacy and Cookies Policy
• Gift Card Information

Freud, Biologist of the Mind

Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend, With a New Preface by the Author

Frank J. Sulloway

Harvard University Press books are not shipped directly to India due to regional distribution arrangements. Buy from your local bookstore, Amazon.co.in, or Flipkart.com.

This book is not shipped directly to country due to regional distribution arrangements.

Pre-order for this book isn't available yet on our website.

This book is currently out of stock.

Edit shipping location

Dropdown items

• Barnes and Noble
• Bookshop.org
• Waterstones

ISBN 9780674323353

Publication date: 01/01/1992

In this monumental intellectual biography, Frank Sulloway demonstrates that Freud always remained, despite his denials, a biologist of the mind; and, indeed, that his most creative inspirations derived significantly from biology. Sulloway analyzes the political aspects of the complex myth of Freud as psychoanalytic hero as it served to consolidate the analytic movement. This is a revolutionary reassessment of Freud and psychoanalysis.

Fascinating… A thought-provoking tour through this extraordinary chapter in the history of ideas. —Jean Strouse, Newsweek

A work of prodigious scholarship in its own right. It establishes a new level of empirical precision and critical skill in the analysis of Freud’s life. —Peter Brooks, New York Times Book Review

Extraordinarily exciting and enlightening… A truly comprehensive intellectual biography of Freud and the analytic movement, which embodies the scholarship so sorely lacking in previous endeavors… The result here is an informative, authoritative, and comprehensive work, brimming with all sorts of revelations and new versions of old tales about Freud’s…predecessors and contemporaries. One’s view of Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis will never be quite the same after reading this book. —Arnold Bernstein, Modern Psychoanalysis

• Frank J. Sulloway is Visiting Scholar in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Book Details

• 6 x 9-1/4 inches
• Harvard University Press

Recommendations

The Americanization of Narcissism

Trauma and Dreams

Questions for Freud

The correspondence of sigmund freud and sándor ferenczi, volume 3: 1920–1933.

Presenting the Past

Sorry, there was an error adding the item to your shopping bag.

Expired session

Sorry, your session has expired. Please refresh your browser's tab.

Main navigation

An item has been added to the cart

Added to shopping bag

• Copy to clipboard

Set your location

It looks like you're in   . Would you like to update your location?

Unavailable

Harvard University Press titles are not shipped directly to India due to local distribution arrangements.

Unavailable in country .

Shopping Bag

Your shopping bag is currently empty. Add items to your shopping bag, to complete check out.

Select your cookie preferences

We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie notice . We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements.

If you agree, we'll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie notice . Your choice applies to using first-party and third-party advertising cookies on this service. Cookies store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. The 96 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Click "Decline" to reject, or "Customise" to make more detailed advertising choices, or learn more. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences , as described in the Cookie notice. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy notice .

• Health, Family & Lifestyle
• Psychology & Psychiatry
• Schools of Thought

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Freud: An Intellectual Biography Hardcover – 2 Feb. 2017

• ISBN-10 0521864186
• ISBN-13 978-0521864183
• Publisher Cambridge University Press
• Publication date 2 Feb. 2017
• Language English
• Dimensions 15.24 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
• Print length 494 pages
• See all details

Product description

Book description, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (2 Feb. 2017)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 494 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521864186
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521864183
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
• 437 in Sigmund Freud
• 966 in Historical Biographies 1701-1900
• 1,400 in Psychological History & Philosophy

About the author

Joel whitebook.

Joel Whitebook is a philosopher and psychoanalyst who was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and raised in a secular and liberal Jewish family. Joel attended the University of California at Berkeley in the late sixties where he majored in philosophy. The Berkeley experience was decisive in shaping his future career in two ways. After he joined the New Left and became more political in his outlook, the brand of analytic philosophy he was being exposed to in the university’s department increasingly appeared too restricted to him. And while he was a student and activist at Berkeley, Joel discovered the tradition of the Frankfurt School, largely through the work of Herbert Marcuse.

Seeking a different approach to the field, Joel became a doctoral student in the philosophy department of The New School For Social Research, where he had the good fortune to study not only with Hannah Arendt, Aron Gurwitsch and Hans Jonas, but also with Albrecht Wellmer, a representative of the second generation of the Frankfurt School. Through his work with Wellmer, Joel’s involvement with Critical Theory and the other thinkers of that tradition deepened significantly. He became particularly interested in the Frankfurt School’s attempt to integrate psychoanalysis into critical social theory. In fact, he adopted that project as his own and has pursued it throughout his career.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the New School in philosophy in 1977, Joel decided to become a practicing psychoanalyst. To this end, he took a second doctorate in clinical psychology at CUNY and received his psychoanalytic training at The New York Freudian Society. Joel hung out his shingle in 1985, and for the next twenty-five years combined a life of private practice and teaching, first at New School, then at Columbia, as well as in a number of clinical settings. He is currently on the faculty of Columbia’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and is the Director of its Psychoanalytic Studies Program.

In his book Perversion and Utopia and in numerous articles, Joel has sought to continue the Frankfurt School’s attempt to integrate psychoanalysis and Critical Theory in a particular way. Following the lead of Hans Loewald and Cornelius Castoriadis, he has examined the major developments in psychoanalysis since the middle of the last century — often grouped under the notion of “the preoedipal turn” — and attempted to work out their consequences for contemporary psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. He has also used preoedipal theory to explore the problem of “the missing mother” in his recent intellectual biography of Freud.

That he was a member of Slate's discussion group on the Sopranos is one of Joel's proudest credentials. During the second and third seasons of the show, he participated in a weekly roundtable discussion of Tony’s relationship with Dr. Melfi along with three psychoanalytic colleagues.

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 67% 19% 9% 1% 3% 67%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 67% 19% 9% 1% 3% 19%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 67% 19% 9% 1% 3% 9%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 67% 19% 9% 1% 3% 1%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 67% 19% 9% 1% 3% 3%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• UK Modern Slavery Statement
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Associates Programme
• Fulfilment by Amazon
• Seller Fulfilled Prime
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• The Amazon Barclaycard
• Credit Card
• Amazon Money Store
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Payment Methods Help
• Shop with Points
• Top Up Your Account
• Top Up Your Account in Store
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Track Packages or View Orders
• Delivery Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Amazon Mobile App
• Customer Service
• Accessibility

• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Cookies Notice
• Interest-Based Ads Notice

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Advance articles
• History Unclassified
• History in Focus
• History Lab
• Engaged History
• Art as Historical Method
• Submission Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Join the AHR Community
• About The American Historical Review
• About the American Historical Association
• AHR Staff & Editors
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous

J oel W hitebook . Freud: An Intellectual Biography .

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Elizabeth Lunbeck, J oel W hitebook . Freud: An Intellectual Biography ., The American Historical Review , Volume 124, Issue 2, April 2019, Pages 736–737, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz106

• Permissions Icon Permissions

For some forty years now, the so-called “Freud Wars” have been raging in the popular press and across the disciplines. Sigmund Freud was a scientific fraud, claim combatants on one side, his preposterous theories unprovable and marked irredeemably by serious flaws of character—most recently and sensationally, that he was both addicted to cocaine and slept with his sister-in-law. No matter, argues the other side; there is no more acute chronicler of humanity’s tragic condition than Freud, evident in his proposing—in his landmark Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)—that the price civilization exacts may be too high to allow us happiness, and that the instinctual renunciations it demands may in fact be intolerable. Few intellectual historians would question Freud’s standing as a towering figure in twentieth-century culture, and, as more than a few have pointed out, the ongoing skirmishes over the validity of psychoanalysis serve not to undermine but to enhance his stature. His signature ideas are everywhere, they argue, routinely invoking W. H. Auden’s 1939 paean to him as “a whole climate of opinion”—if “wrong and, at times, absurd.”

American Historical Association members

Personal account.

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Short-term Access

To purchase short-term access, please sign in to your personal account above.

Don't already have a personal account? Register

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Editorial Board
• Author Guidelines
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1937-5239
• Print ISSN 0002-8762
• Copyright © 2024 The American Historical Association
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Sweepstakes
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

Sigmund Freud's Life, Theories, and Influence

Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Psychoanalysis

• Major Works
• Perspectives
• Thinkers Influenced by Freud
• Contributions

Frequently Asked Questions

Psychology's most famous figure is also one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist born in 1856, is often referred to as the "father of modern psychology."

Freud revolutionized how we think about and treat mental health conditions. Freud founded psychoanalysis as a way of listening to patients and better understanding how their minds work. Psychoanalysis continues to have an enormous influence on modern psychology and psychiatry.

Sigmund Freud's theories and work helped shape current views of dreams, childhood, personality, memory, sexuality, and therapy. Freud's work also laid the foundation for many other theorists to formulate ideas, while others developed new theories in opposition to his ideas.

Sigmund Freud Biography

To understand Freud's legacy, it is important to begin with a look at his life. His experiences informed many of his theories, so learning more about his life and the times in which he lived can lead to a deeper understanding of where his theories came from.

Freud was born in 1856 in a town called Freiberg in Moravia—in what is now known as the Czech Republic. He was the oldest of eight children. His family moved to Vienna several years after he was born, and he lived most of his life there.

Freud earned a medical degree and began practicing as a doctor in Vienna. He was appointed Lecturer on Nervous Diseases at the University of Vienna in 1885.

After spending time in Paris and attending lectures given by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, Freud became more interested in theories explaining the human mind (which would later relate to his work in psychoanalysis).

Freud eventually withdrew from academia after the Viennese medical community rejected the types of ideas he brought back from Paris (specifically on what was then called hysteria ). Freud went on to publish influential works in neurology, including "On Aphasia: A Critical Study," in which he coined the term agnosia , meaning the inability to interpret sensations.

In later years, Freud and his colleague Josef Breuer published "Preliminary Report" and "Studies on Hysteria." When their friendship ended, Freud continued to publish his own works on psychoanalysis.

Freud and his family left Vienna due to discrimination against Jewish people. He moved to England in 1938 and died in 1939.

Sigmund Freud’s Theories

Freud's theories were enormously influential but subject to considerable criticism both now and during his life. However, his ideas have become interwoven into the fabric of our culture, with terms such as " Freudian slip ," " repression ," and " denial " appearing regularly in everyday language.

Freud's theories include:

• Unconscious mind : This is one of his most enduring ideas, which is that the mind is a reservoir of thoughts, memories, and emotions that lie outside the awareness of the conscious mind.
• Personality : Freud proposed that personality is made up of three key elements: the id, the ego, and the superego . The ego is the conscious state, the id is the unconscious, and the superego is the moral or ethical framework that regulates how the ego operates. Conflicts and interactions between these parts makeup one's personality.
• Life and death instincts : Freud claimed that two classes of instincts, life and death, dictated human behavior. Life instincts include sexual procreation, survival, and pleasure; death instincts include aggression, self-harm, and destruction.
• Psychosexual development : Freud's theory of psychosexual development posits that there are five stages of growth in which people's personalities and sexual selves evolve. These phases are the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latent stage, and genital stage.
• Mechanisms of defense : Freud suggested that people use defense mechanisms to avoid anxiety. These mechanisms include displacement, repression, sublimation, regression, and many more.

Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

Freud's ideas had such a strong impact on psychology that an entire school of thought emerged from his work: psychoanalysis . Psychoanalysis has had a lasting impact on both the study of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy.

Psychoanalysis sought to bring unconscious information into conscious awareness in order to induce catharsis . Catharsis is an emotional release that may bring about relief from psychological distress. 

Research has found that psychoanalysis can be an effective treatment for a number of mental health conditions. The self-examination that is involved in the therapy process can help people achieve long-term growth and improvement.

Sigmund Freud's Patients

Freud based his ideas on case studies of his own patients and those of his colleagues. These patients helped shape his theories and many have become well known. Some of these individuals included:

• Anna O. (aka Bertha Pappenheim)
• Dora (Ida Bauer)
• Little Hans (Herbert Graf)
• Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer)
• Sabina Spielrein
• Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff)

Anna O. was never actually a patient of Freud's. She was a patient of Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. The two men often corresponded about Anna O's symptoms, eventually publishing the book Studies on Hysteria on her case. It was through their work and correspondence that the technique known as talk therapy emerged.  

Major Works by Freud

Freud's writings detail many of his major theories and ideas. His personal favorite was The Interpretation of Dreams. Of it, he wrote: "[It] contains...the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime."

Some of Freud's major books include:

• "Civilization and Its Discontents"
• "The Future of an Illusion"
• " The Interpretation of Dreams "
• "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life"
• "Totem and Taboo"

Freud's Perspectives

Outside of the field of psychology, Freud wrote and theorized about a broad range of subjects. He also wrote about and developed theories related to topics including sex, dreams, religion, women, and culture.

Views on Women

Both during his life and after, Freud was criticized for his views of women , femininity, and female sexuality. One of his most famous critics was the psychologist Karen Horney , who rejected his view that women suffered from "penis envy."

Penis envy, according to Freud, was a phenomenon that women experienced upon witnessing a naked male body because they felt they themselves must be "castrated boys" and wished for their own penis.

Horney instead argued that men experience "womb envy" and are left with feelings of inferiority because they are unable to bear children.

Views on Religion

Freud was born and raised Jewish but described himself as an atheist in adulthood. "The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life," he wrote of religion.

He continued to have a keen interest in the topics of religion and spirituality and wrote a number of books focused on the subject. 

Psychologists Influenced by Freud

In addition to his grand and far-reaching theories of human psychology, Freud also left his mark on a number of individuals who went on to become some of psychology's greatest thinkers. Some of the eminent psychologists who were influenced by Sigmund Freud include:

• Alfred Adler
• Erik Erikson
• Ernst Jones
• Melanie Klein

While Freud's work is often dismissed today as non-scientific, there is no question that he had a tremendous influence not only on psychology but on the larger culture as well.

Many of Freud's ideas have become so steeped in the public psyche that we oftentimes forget that they have their origins in his psychoanalytic tradition.

Freud's Contributions to Psychology

Freud's theories are highly controversial today. For instance, he has been criticized for his lack of knowledge about women and for sexist notions in his theories about sexual development, hysteria, and penis envy.

People are skeptical about the legitimacy of Freud's theories because they lack the scientific evidence that psychological theories have today. Think about how challenging it is to study unconscious processes like dreams and repressed memories with the scientific method .

However, it remains true that Freud had a significant and lasting influence on the field of psychology. He provided a foundation for many concepts that psychologists used and continue to use to make new discoveries.

Perhaps Freud's most important contribution to the field of psychology was the development of talk therapy as an approach to treating mental health problems.

In addition to serving as the basis for psychoanalysis, talk therapy is now part of many psychotherapeutic interventions designed to help people overcome psychological distress and behavioral problems. 

The Unconscious

Prior to the works of Freud, many people believed that behavior was inexplicable. He developed the idea of the unconscious as being the hidden motivation behind what we do. For instance, his work on dream interpretation suggested that our real feelings and desires lie underneath the surface of conscious life.

Childhood Influence

Freud believed that childhood experiences impact adulthood—specifically, traumatic experiences that we have as children can manifest as maladaptive personality traits and mental health issues when we're adults.

While childhood experiences aren't the only contributing factors to mental health during adulthood, Freud laid the foundation for a person's childhood to be taken into consideration during therapy and when diagnosing.

Literary Theory

Literary scholars and students alike often analyze texts through a Freudian lens. Freud's theories created an opportunity to understand fictional characters and their authors based on what's written or what a reader can interpret from the text on topics such as dreams, sexuality, and personality.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis. Also known as the father of modern psychology, he was born in 1856 and died in 1939.

While Freud theorized that childhood experiences shaped personality, the neo-Freudians (including Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney) believed that social and cultural influences played an important role. Freud believed that sex was a primary human motivator, whereas neo-Freudians did not.

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis and published many influential works such as "The Interpretation of Dreams." His theories about personality and sexuality were and continue to be extremely influential and controversial in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

Sigmund Freud was born in a town called Freiberg in Moravia, which is now the Czech Republic. However, most of his childhood years were spent in Vienna.

It's likely that Freud died by natural means. However, he did have oral cancer at the time of his death and was administered a dose of morphine that some believed was a method of physician-assisted suicide.

Freud used psychoanalysis, also known as talk therapy, along with hypnosis and dream analysis, in order to get his patients to uncover their own unconscious thoughts and bring them into consciousness. Freud believed this would help his patients change their maladaptive behaviors.

Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and introduced influential theories such as: his ideas of the conscious and unconscious; the id, ego, and superego; dream interpretation; and psychosexual development.

Final Thoughts

While Freud's theories have been the subject of considerable controversy and debate, his impact on psychology, therapy, and culture is undeniable. As W.H. Auden wrote in his 1939 poem, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud":

In Memory of Sigmund Freud, Poem Stanza by W.H. Auden (1939)

For one who’d lived among enemies so long, if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us, he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives…

Grzybowski A, Żołnierz J. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) .  J Neurol . 2021;268(6):2299-2300. doi:10.1007/s00415-020-09972-4

Bargh JA. The modern unconscious .  World Psychiatry . 2019;18(2):225-226. doi:10.1002/wps.20625

Boag S. Ego, drives, and the dynamics of internal objects .  Front Psychol . 2014;5:666. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00666

Meissner WW.  The question of drive vs. motive in psychoanalysis: A modest proposal .  J Am Psychoanal Assoc . 2009;57(4):807-845. doi:10.1177/0003065109342572

American Psychological Association. Psychosexual development . APA Dictionary of Psychology.

Waqas A, Rehman A, Malik A, Muhammad U, Khan S, Mahmood N.  Association of ego defense mechanisms with academic performance, anxiety and depression in medical students: A mixed methods study .  Cureus . 2015;7(9):e337. doi:10.7759/cureus.337

Shedler J.  The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy .  Am Psychol . 2010;65(2):98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378

Bogousslavsky J, Dieguez S. Sigmund Freud and hysteria: The etiology of psychoanalysis . In: Bogousslavsky J, ed.  Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience . S Karger AG. 2014;35:109-125. doi:10.1159/000360244

Grubin D.  Young Dr. Freud . Public Broadcasting Service.

Gersick S. Penis envy . In: Zeigler-Hill V, Shackelford T, eds. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences . Springer International Publishing. 2017:1-5. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_616-1

Bayne E. Womb envy: The cause of misogyny and even male achievement? Womens Stud Int Forum. 2011;34(2):151-160. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2011.01.007

Freud S. Civilization and Its Discontents . Norton.

Yeung AWK. Is the influence of Freud declining in psychology and psychiatry? A bibliometric analysis . Front Psychol. 2021;12. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631516

Giordano G. The contribution of Freud’s theories to the literary analysis of two Victorian novels: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre . Int J Engl Lit. 2020;11(2):29-34. doi:10.5897/IJEL2019.1312

American Psychological Association. Neo-Freudian . APA Dictionary of Psychology.

Hoffman L.  Un homme manque: Freud's engagement with Alfred Adler's masculine protest: Commentary on Balsam .  J Am Psychoanal Assoc . 2017;65(1):99-108. doi:10.1177/0003065117690351

Macleod ADS. Was Sigmund Freud's death hastened? Intern Med J. 2017;47(8):966-969. doi:10.1111/imj.13504

Kernberg OF. The four basic components of psychoanalytic technique and derived psychoanalytic psychotherapies .  World Psychiatry . 2016;15(3):287-288. doi:10.1002/wps.20368

Alexander S. In memory of Sigmund Freud . Yale University Campus Press.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Corpus ID: 171651540

Freud: An Intellectual Biography

• Joel Whitebook
• Published 16 January 2017
• Psychology, Philosophy

6 Citations

Foucault, psychoanalysis, and critique, feminine law: freud, free speech, and the voice of desire jill gentile with michael macrone, routledge, new york, 2018, 290pp, paper, $32.95, isbn-13: 978-1782202776, resistance revisited: disillusionment, hierarchies and the brain, musicality in the consulting room.

• Highly Influenced
• 23 Excerpts

Mourning Freud by Madelon Sprengnether (review)

The impact of nancy chodorow’s the reproduction of mothering and its implications for the future, 216 references, becoming freud: the making of a psychoanalyst, the ability to mourn: disillusionment and the social origins of psychoanalysis., freud's moses: judaism terminable and interminable, a most dangerous method: the story of jung, freud, and sabina spielrein, why did freud reject god: a psychodynamic interpretation, the triumph of the therapeutic: uses of faith after freud, the birth of psychoanalysis from the spirit of technique, perversion and utopia: a study in psychoanalysis and critical theory, home is where we start from : essays by a psychoanalyst, freud and philosophy: a fragment, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

NEW EXHIBITIONS The Place I Am Not : 25 September to 20 October 2024 Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists : 30 October 2024 to 5 May 2025

Freud: An Intellectual Biography – Joel Whitebook

Freud biographer and practising psychoanalyst, joel whitebook, discusses his new book freud: an intellectual biography.

Offering a radically new portrait, Whitebook reconsiders Freud in light of recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy and cultural theory. He explores the man in all his complexity alongside a new interpretation of his theories that overturns many stereotypes that surround him.

An elegant foray into the man and his mind…rich and illuminating. -Guardian

Despite all attempts to bury him, Freud remains the ultimate revenant, haunting the 21st century. Whitebook shows how relevant many of Freud’s ideas remain.  – Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

Joel Whitebook is a philosopher and psychoanalyst who maintained a private practice in New York City for twenty-five years. He is currently on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and he is the Director of the University’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program.

Posted in Podcast by Maeve on June 6th, 2017.

Subscribe to comments | Leave a Comment | Trackback

Leave a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

Latest Posts

• About Psychoanalyst's training
• Freud and his soul-searching antiquities
• What is Your 'Acropolis'?
• Freudian Wisdom for the Times of Turmoil
• The Body Image Project

Sigmund Freud Library Conservation Appeal

Please help preserve the library that shaped the creation of the ‘talking cure’.

Current exhibition

Freud and Latin America

An exciting exploration of the impact that Freud had on culture, society, art, and psychoanalysis in Latin America.

What’s On

Online. On Demand. Events, courses and conferences. All available worldwide.

Plan your visit

Plan your visit to the Freud Museum: opening times, directions and admission fees.

Newsletter Signup

Be the first to hear about our events, exhibitions and other activities.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Freud An Intellectual Biography

Related Papers

Raj Wali Khan

Revista CES Psicología

Bolivar Ochoa

Resumen: Este artículo se basa en una conferencia pública, realizada en mayo de 2006, en el auditorio de la universidad CES, como homenaje a los 150 años del nacimiento de Sigmund Freud. En él se plantea cómo lo inconsciente fue cubierto en la cultura ...

British Journal of Psychotherapy

David M. Black

Abstract. Idealisation, both of individuals and of aspects of theory and clinical practice, has been a pervasive theme in psychoanalytic history. This paper makes use of Joel Whitebook's Freud: an intellectual biography (2017) to examine the impact of idealisation on Freud's own history, looking especially at three areas: his relations with women, his understanding of science, and his attitudes toward Jewishness and issues to do with ethical values and religion. It suggests that this has left a heritage of idealisation within the psychoanalytic profession that is now counter-productive, and that it is time for psychoanalytic thinking to enter further into dialogue with philosophy and other disciplines on a basis of mutual respect.

Australasian Psychiatry

Ron Spielman

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

Maximiliano Azcona

Indubitably, Sigmund Freud was one of last century's thinkers who contributed the most to redefining the scope of what is possible in the domain of human phenomena. He soundly charged at the picture that the western culture had formed of the human being, installing a field of inquiry and action whose potency stays current to this day. It is not an overstatement to say that psychoanalysis represented one of the most important epistemic torsions in the history of humankind, one whose implications have yet to be fully assimilated. The objective of this brief entry, concisely addressing a few key conceptual and methodological notions, is to show how the possibleimpossible axis built a bridge that enabled the Freudian foray into mind and culture, disrupting thus modern representations of what we have been, are and can become, as human beings.

Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis

The book, ‘Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis’ (ISBN 978-87-4303-717-0) is published, available in Denmark and Germany, and will be promoted in Britain, America, and Canada. A synopsis of the book is contained in the pdf along with text samples from the book. The book runs from the records of the Freud family in Pribor, the Jewish Enlightenment from a center not too far of in Tysmenitz which, influenced Freud’s parents and his early years. His first three years were actually spent with a Catholic nanny which left him relatively positive to the Catholic faith but his family's beliefs in Judaism were strongly rejected. This, plus his reports of some sexualization in Freud records, leaves him with early sexual attachments to his mother and anger against his father - his response to his family was therefore rooted in Oedipal dynamics. Sexual theories of the time, including Havelock Ellis, von Krafft-Ebbing, and Albert Moll also play a part in his theory of libido. He also seems to hold to such templates where two mothers are present and with birth confusion, he records two possible fathers. Freud’s Oedipal theory established at age three, occur simultaneously when Freud significantly lost his nanny and returned to his mother. These factors become evident in his works up to and including his last work, Moses and Monotheism. A significant amount of Freud’s works are discussed including, the psychosexual stages, Leonardo da Vinci, Totem and taboo, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In this last section, there are brief entries describing the main ideas of those who met with Freud in Vienna on Wednesdays. These are the ‘discontents’ where despite stormy meetings, some remained as Freudians, and some, like CG Jung and Alfred Adler, go their own way. We then have a ‘diaspora’ of psychologists which, gives rise to the modern world of psychology and its disciplines as we find it.

Andreas Mayer

Henry Lothane

Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia

Dianna T Kenny

Psychoanalysis has had a long gestation, during the course of which it has experienced multiple rebirths, leading some current authors to complain that there has been such a proliferation of theories of psychoanalysis over the past 115 years that the field has become theoretically fragmented and is in disarray (Fonagy & Target, 2003; Rangell, 2006). In this paper, Kenny surveys the past and present landscapes of psychoanalytic theorizing and clinical practice to trace the evolution of Freud’s original insights and psychoanalytic techniques to current theory and practice. First, the article sketches the evolutionary chronology of psychoanalytic theory; second, it discusses the key psychoanalytic techniques derived from clinical practice, with which psychoanalysis is most strongly identified; third, it interrogates whether Freud’s original theoretical conceptualizations and clinical practices are still recognizable in current psychoanalytic theory and practice, using four key exemplar...

paul heelas

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Psychoanalytic Psychology

Frank Summers

Leon Hoffman

Martin Klüners

Mohd Abbas Abdul Razak

Michael Fitzgerald

Eka Putri Yositania

History of the Human Sciences

Alfred Tauber

Ajith Dinakarlal

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

Sarah Ackerman

Hossam (Sam) Youssef Ph.D., Psy.ThD., M.Sc.

Goddess Dr. Myrna-Elois Washington

Jennifer Prestien

Carlo Bonomi

Trivium: Estudos Interdisciplinares

Isabelle Alfandary

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

Elliot Jurist

Shantanu Tilak

Slobodan G. Markovich

Imtiyaz: Jurnal Ilmu Keislaman

Evita Yuliatul Wahidah

Frank Sulloway

Journal of Contemporary Development & Management Studies

Mohd Abbas Abdul Razak , Nik A. Hisham Ismail

Studies in Gender and Sexuality

Steven Reisner

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society

Herman Westerink

dona mayasari

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024