SECTION ONE
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Religion and the "Godless Jew"Many have investigated and speculated about the role of religion in Freud's thought. Born into a Jewish family with religious roots, Freud would live a secular life while continuing to identify himself as a Jew. Jacob Freud, Sigmund's father, dedicated a copy of the family Bible to his adult son, with a Hebrew inscription calling it a "keepsake and a token of love." |
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In my youth I felt an overpowering need to understand something of the riddles of the world in which we live and perhaps even to contribute something to their solution. -- Sigmund Freud, 1927 |
![]() The Jacob Freud
family, Vienna, (left to right standing) Pauline, Anna, unidentified girl, Sigmund, possibly Rosa's fiancé, Rosa, Marie, and Simon Nathanson [Amalia's cousin]; (sitting) Adolfine, Amalia, unidentified boy, Alexander, and Jacob
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Freud FamilyFreud's mother, Amalia, was possibly his father's third wife and twenty years his younger. Sigmund's half-brother, Emanuel, was older than his mother and had children of his own when Sigmund was born. Thus Sigmund was born an uncle -- a year younger than his first playmate, his nephew. |
Freud became a liberal because the liberal world view was congenial to him and because, as the saying goes, it was good for the Jews. -- Peter Gay, 1988 |
ViennaAt the turn of the century Vienna was a city that seemed both to resist and promote experimentation in politics and culture. If much of Freud's work was done in the city, his concerns and approach to problems drew on intellectual traditions and medical advances from a European-wide context. After a four-year engagement, Freud and Martha Bernays married and made Vienna their home for all but the final sixteen months of their life together. This collage of family photographs features a young Martha and Sigmund and their six children. |
![]() View of Tabor
Street, Vienna, ca. 1899
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Unpleasure remains the sole means of education. -- Sigmund Freud, 1895 |
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Early Work in NeuroscienceFreud's early training in neurology left him with an ambition to seek the biological Bedrock -- of all psychological conditions. Memory, for him, was at the crossroads of the biological and the psychological. When we remember, we are recoding original neurological traces. He described his research in letters to Martha Bernays, his future wife. |
![]() Sigmund Freud |
![]() Freud's sketch of his
room |
In any event, [Freud's] researches in this field prove an extraordinary gift and capacity for guiding scientific investigation into new channels. -- R. von Krafft-Ebing, 1888 |
Cocaine AmbitionsFreud thought that the then little-known drug cocaine might be of great use fighting morphine addiction and melancholy. Around the same time, an associate, Carl Koller, was experimenting successfully with the drug as a local anesthetic, especially for eye surgery. Freud envied the recognition Koller received, experimented with the drug himself and urged others to do so before realizing it could be addictive. |
![]() Contribution
to the Knowledge of Cocaine. Vienna: 1885 Envelope with prescription
and wrapper that held cocaine, ca. 1883 |
Many, if not most of Freud's fundamental conceptions were biological by inspiration as well as by implication. -- Frank Sulloway, 1979 |
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Transition to MedicineAlthough dedicated to research early on, financial considerations led Freud to become a clinician. He gained experience at the General Hospital in Vienna before establishing his own practice at his residence, most famously at Berggasse 19. His patients became a primary source for his research and writing. |
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January 9, 2002
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