Sigmund Freud

The famously influential neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was born in a small town in what is now the Czech Republic. The family later moved to Vienna, where Freud would excel in his education, entering the medical faculty at the University of Vienna when he was 17. After studying philosophy, physiology and zoology he gained his MD in 1881. He worked in a practical capacity in a hospital and conducted cerebral anatomy research, but in 1886 set up in private clinical practice in treating ‘nervous disorders’ and would go on to develop the various techniques associated with psychoanalysis, as well as his famous theories on the unconscious, the human psyche, dreams and sexuality – leading to the publication of many works, of which The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), The Ego and the Id (1923) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) are just a few examples.