1) Sigmund Freud

• Sigismund (Sigmund) Freud was born either on March 6 or May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, which is now part of the Czech Republic.
• Freud was the firstborn child of Jacob and Amalie Nathanson Freud, although his father had two grown sons, Emanuel and Philipp, from a previous marriage. Jacob and Amalie Freud had seven other children within 10 years, but Sigmund remained the favorite of his young, indulgent mother, which may have partially contributed to his lifelong self-confidence
• The Austrian capital remained Sigmund Freud’s home for nearly 80 years, until 1938 when the Nazi invasion forced him to emigrate to London, where he died on September 23, 1939
• After completing medical school, Freud worked as an assistant physician at the General Hospital in Vienna, then spent several months studying with Jean Charcot, one of Europe’s leading physicians, at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris
• In 1884, Freud began working with Joseph Breuer, a Viennese physician who used hypnosis to treat hysterical symptoms such as paralysis, blindness, deafness, and muteness through catharsis.
• In 1886, Freud married Martha Bernays, who came from a wealthy Jewish family that owned a textile factory. They moved into their own apartment and began raising six children together
• A second personal crisis was his realization that he was now middle-aged and had yet to achieve the fame he so passionately desired.
• Freud suffered both professional isolation and (first) personal crises. He had begun to analyze his own dreams, and after the death of his father in 1896, he initiated the practice of analyzing himself daily.
• He spent 4 months with Charcot, from whom he learned the hypnotic technique for treating hysteria, a disorder typically characterized by paralysis or the improper functioning of certain parts of the body. Through hypnosis, Freud became convinced of a psychogenic and sexual origin of hysterical symptoms.
• John Breuer taught Freud about catharsis, the process of removing hysterical symptoms through “talking them out.” While using catharsis, Freud gradually and laboriously discovered the free association technique, which soon replaced hypnosis as his principal therapeutic technique.
• the case of Anna O, a young woman Freud had never met, but whom Breuer had spent many hours treating for hysteria several years page 25 earlier
• Freud then turned to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin physician who served as a sounding board for Freud’s newly developing ideas