La naissance de la psychanalyse

by Sigmund Freud

Les lettres adressées à Fliess par Freud nous donnent un portrait de ce dernier à l’époque où s’ouvrait devant lui, encore hésitant, un nouveau champ d’investigations, celui de la psychopathologie, et où il commençait à acquérir les notions sur lesquelles se fonde la psychanalyse thérapeutique et théorique. Nous voyons Freud très préoccupé d’un « problème qui n’avait jamais été abordé auparavant » et en lutte contre une société dont l’hostilité envers ses travaux mit en danger son existence matérielle et celle de sa famille. Nous faisons aussi en sa compagnie une partie du chemin qui le conduisit, après bien des efforts, à la consolidation de ses vues nouvelles, et cela en dépit de sa propre résistance intérieure inconsciente.
Cette correspondance s’est poursuivie de 1887 à 1902, c’est-à-dire de la 32e à la 47e année de Freud et à partir de l’époque où il commença à se spécialiser dans les maladies nerveuses jusqu’aux études préliminaires qui devaient aboutir aux Trois essais sur la théorie de la sexualité.

— Ernst Kris —

432 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 17, 2015

About the author

Dr. Sigismund Freud (later changed to Sigmund) was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential—and controversial—minds of the 20th century.

In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.

Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.

In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.

After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'.

In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.

Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939.