Sigmund Freud
(May 6, 1856 - September 23,1939) Austria
Psychologist
Born in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic), was an originator of psychoanalysis.
The Freuds move to Vienna in 1860. Freud in 1866-1872 has a close friendship with his classmate Eduard Silberstein. In 1881 Freud qualifies as doctor of medicine. In 1886 he marry to Martha Bernays.
Influenced by the French phisiologist Charcot, and the researches into hysteria of the Viennese physician Breuer, he developped the method of free associationand interpretation of dreamswhich are still techniques of psychoanalysis.
His theory of the repression of infantile sexuality as the root of neuroses in the adult (see Oedipus complex) was controversial, and his associates Adler and Yung parted company with him. In 1938, following the nazi occupation, he left Vienna for London. Freud died in London.
His work, long accepted as definitive by many, has been increasingly questioned in recent years.
In 1889 begins his friendship with Wilhelm Fliess. Strong friendship bonds are soon established between the two. Fliess is Freud's confessor and moral supporter, during Freud's most productive activity as a psychoanalyst and they exchange letters.
The experience involving Fliess is more than the story of the projection of psychic ambivalence of an instance of Freud, discovering an unquenchable need in himself of having a friend and an enemy, in the same person. Freud gained a lot from the confrontation of scientific ideas, including part of his friend's conceptions into his nascent theories.
We have become acquainted with the relationships between Freud and Fliess from their letters as preserved, much to Freud's dismay, by Marie Bonaparte, in 1938, at a time when Freud was in great hurry to immigrate to Great Britain together with his family. Their correspondence covers the period between 1887-1904.
In one of his letters to Wilhelm Fliess (May 18, 1898) Sigmund Freud writes:
"I am so immensely glad that you are giving me the gift of the Other, a critic and reader - and one of your quality at that. I cannot write entirely without an audience, but do not at all mind writing only for you."
Although Freud hadn't discovered the principle yet, he suffered a "transference" relationship to Fliess typical of an analys' relation to the analyst, wherein the emotional dynamics between the analys and parental figures in the repressed parts of childhood reemerge and are projected onto the analyst. Certainly the intensity of Freud's feelings for Fliess and the sudden end of their friendship around 1900 are evidence of Freud's transference and Fliess's counter-transference at work.
They meet for the last time in Vienna in 1903. Their relationship will cool down little by little, than will be marked by variuos accidents, who will lead at the final break.
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