Early life and education ,
Austrian Empire (
Příbor, Czech Republic) Sigmund Freud was born to
Ashkenazi Jewish parents in the
Moravian town of
Freiberg, in the
Austrian Empire (now Příbor,
Czech Republic), the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from
Galicia. His father,
Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp, by his first marriage. Jakob's family were
Hasidic Jews and, although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition, he came to be known for his
Torah study. He and Freud's mother,
Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi
Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a
caul, which his mother saw as a positive
omen for the boy's future. , in 1872 In 1859, the
Freud family left Freiberg. Freud's half-brothers emigrated to
Manchester, England, parting him from the "inseparable" playmate of his early childhood, Emanuel's son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius, born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to
Leipzig and then in 1860 to
Vienna, where four sisters and a brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866). In 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the , a prominent high school. He proved to be an outstanding pupil and graduated from the
Matura in 1873 with honors. He loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English,
Hebrew,
Latin and
Greek. Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17. He had planned to study law, but joined the medical faculty at the university, where his studies included philosophy under
Franz Brentano, physiology under
Ernst Brücke, and zoology under
Darwinist professor
Carl Claus. In 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Claus's zoological research station in
Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. In 1877, Freud moved to Ernst Brücke's physiology laboratory, where he spent six years comparing the brains of humans with those of other vertebrates such as frogs,
lampreys, as well as invertebrates, for example,
crayfish. His research work on the biology of nervous tissue proved seminal for the subsequent discovery of the
neuron in the 1890s. Freud's research work was interrupted in 1879 by the obligation to undertake a year's compulsory military service. The lengthy downtimes enabled him to complete a commission to translate four essays from
John Stuart Mill's collected works. He graduated with an
MD in March 1881.
Early career and marriage In 1882, Freud began his medical career at
Vienna General Hospital. His research work in cerebral anatomy led to the publication in 1884 of an influential paper on the palliative effects of cocaine, and his work on
aphasia would form the basis of his first book
On Aphasia: A Critical Study, published in 1891. Over three years, Freud worked in various departments of the hospital. His time spent in
Theodor Meynert's
psychiatric clinic and as a
locum in a local asylum led to an increased interest in clinical work. His substantial body of published research led to his appointment as a university lecturer or
docent in
neuropathology in 1885, a non-salaried post but one that entitled him to give lectures at the University of Vienna. In 1886, Freud resigned his hospital post and entered private practice, specializing in "nervous disorders". The same year, he married
Martha Bernays, the granddaughter of
Isaac Bernays, a chief rabbi in Hamburg. Freud was, as an
atheist, dismayed at the requirement in Austria for a Jewish religious ceremony and briefly considered, before dismissing, the prospect of joining the Protestant 'Confession' to avoid one. A civil ceremony for Bernays and Freud took place on 13 September, and a religious ceremony took place the following day, with Freud having been hastily tutored in the Hebrew prayers. The Freuds had
six children: Mathilde (b. 1887), Jean-Martin (b. 1889), Oliver (b. 1891),
Ernst (b. 1892), Sophie (b. 1893), and
Anna (b. 1895). From 1891 until they left Vienna in 1938, Freud and his family lived in an apartment at
Berggasse 19, near
Innere Stadt. On 8 December 1897, Freud was initiated into the German Jewish cultural association
B'nai B'rith, to which he remained linked all his life. Freud gave a speech on the interpretation of dreams, which had an enthusiastic reception. It anticipated the
book of the same name, which was published two years later. , Vienna In 1896, Minna Bernays, Martha Freud's sister, became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé. "[A] paper published in 1969 by John M. Billinsky contained the transcript of a conversation he had with Carl Jung|[Carl] Jung in 1957, in which Jung confided that ... Minna herself had told him about her affair with Freud". The discovery of a Swiss hotel guest book entry for 13 August 1898, signed by Freud whilst travelling with his sister-in-law, has been presented as evidence of the affair. Freud began
smoking tobacco at age 24; initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker. He believed smoking enhanced his capacity to work and that he could exercise
self-control in moderating it. Despite health warnings from colleague
Wilhelm Fliess, he remained a smoker, eventually developing
buccal cancer. Freud suggested to Fliess in 1897 that addictions, including that to tobacco, were substitutes for
masturbation, "the one great habit." Freud had greatly admired his philosophy tutor,
Franz Brentano, who was known for his theories of perception and introspection. Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). Although Brentano denied its existence, his discussion of the unconscious probably helped introduce Freud to the concept. Freud owned and made use of
Charles Darwin's major evolutionary writings and was also influenced by
Eduard von Hartmann's
The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). Other texts of importance to Freud were by
Fechner and
Herbart, with the latter's
Psychology as Science perhaps of underrated significance in this respect. Freud also drew on the work of
Theodor Lipps, who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy. Though Freud was reluctant to associate his psychoanalytic insights with prior philosophical theories, attention has been drawn to similarities between his work and that of both
Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche. In 1908, Freud said that he occasionally read Nietzsche and was strongly fascinated by his writings, but did not study him, because he found Nietzsche's "intuitive insights" resembled his own work at the time too much, and also because he was overwhelmed by the "wealth of ideas" he encountered when he read Nietzsche. Freud sometimes would deny the influence of Nietzsche's ideas. Historian
Paul Roazen quotes Peter L. Rudnytsky, who wrote that, based on Freud's correspondence with his adolescent friend Eduard Silberstein, Freud read Nietzsche's
The Birth of Tragedy and probably the first two of the
Untimely Meditations when he was seventeen. Freud bought Nietzsche's collected works in 1900, telling Wilhelm Fliess that he hoped to find in Nietzsche's works "the words for much that remains mute in me." Later, however, he said he had not yet opened them. Freud came to treat Nietzsche's writings, according to
Peter Gay, "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied." His interest in philosophy declined after he decided on a career in
neurology. Freud read
William Shakespeare in English; his understanding of human psychology may have been influenced by Shakespeare's plays. Freud's Jewish origins and his allegiance to his secular Jewish identity were significant in the formation of his intellectual and moral outlook, especially concerning his intellectual non-conformism, as he pointed out in his
Autobiographical Study. They would also have a substantial effect on the content of psychoanalytic ideas, particularly in respect of their common concerns with depth interpretation and "the bounding of desire by law".
Relationship with Fliess During the formative period of his work, Freud valued and came to rely on the intellectual and emotional support of his friend
Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin-based ear, nose, and throat specialist whom he had first met in 1887. Both men saw themselves as isolated from the prevailing clinical and theoretical mainstream because of their ambitions to develop radical new theories of sexuality. Fliess developed highly eccentric theories of human
biorhythms and a nasogenital connection which are today considered pseudoscientific. He shared Freud's views on the importance of certain aspects of sexuality –
masturbation,
coitus interruptus, and the use of
condoms – in the etiology of what was then called the "actual neuroses," primarily
neurasthenia and certain physically manifested anxiety symptoms. They maintained an extensive correspondence from which Freud drew on Fliess's speculations on infantile sexuality and bisexuality to elaborate and revise his own ideas. His first attempt at a systematic theory of the mind, his
Project for a Scientific Psychology, was developed as a
metapsychology with Fliess as interlocutor. However, Freud's efforts to build a bridge between neurology and psychology were eventually abandoned after they had reached an impasse, as his letters to Fliess reveal, though some ideas of the
Project were to be taken up again in the concluding chapter of
The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud had Fliess repeatedly operate on his nose and sinuses to treat "nasal reflex neurosis", and subsequently referred his patient
Emma Eckstein to him. According to Freud, her history of symptoms included severe leg pains with consequent restricted mobility, as well as stomach and menstrual pains. These pains were, according to Fliess's theories, caused by habitual masturbation, which, as the tissue of the nose and genitalia were linked, was curable by removal of part of the
middle turbinate. Fliess's surgery proved disastrous, resulting in profuse, recurrent nasal bleeding; he had left a half-metre of gauze in Eckstein's nasal cavity, whose subsequent removal left her permanently disfigured. At first, though aware of Fliess's culpability and regarding the remedial surgery in horror, Freud could bring himself only to intimate delicately in his correspondence with Fliess the nature of his disastrous role, and in subsequent letters maintained a tactful silence on the matter or else returned to the face-saving topic of Eckstein's hysteria. Freud ultimately, in light of Eckstein's history of adolescent self-cutting and irregular nasal (and menstrual) bleeding, concluded that Fliess was "completely without blame", as Eckstein's post-operative haemorrhages were hysterical "wish-bleedings" linked to "an old wish to be loved in her illness" and triggered as a means of "rearousing [Freud's] affection". Eckstein nonetheless continued her analysis with Freud. She was restored to full mobility and went on to practice psychoanalysis herself.
Development of psychoanalysis 's
A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière (1887) depicting a
Charcot demonstration. Freud had a lithograph of this painting placed over the couch in his consulting rooms. In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a three-month fellowship to study with
Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into
hypnosis. He was later to recall the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Once he had set up in private practice in Vienna in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work. He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator,
Josef Breuer, in a type of hypnosis that was different from the French methods he had studied, in that it did not use suggestion. The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud's clinical practice. Described as
Anna O., she was invited to talk about her symptoms while under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase "
talking cure"). Her symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of traumatic incidents associated with their onset. The inconsistent results of Freud's early clinical work eventually led him to abandon hypnosis, having concluded that more consistent and effective symptom relief could be achieved by encouraging patients to talk freely, without censorship or inhibition, about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. He called this procedure "
free association". In conjunction with this, Freud found that patients' dreams could be fruitfully analyzed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of
repression which, he had concluded, underlay symptom formation. By 1896, he was using the term "
psychoanalysis" to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based. Freud's development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams, and periods of depression — a "neurasthenia" that he linked to the death of his father in 1896 and that prompted a "self-analysis" of his own dreams and memories of childhood. His explorations of his feelings of hostility to his father and rivalrous jealousy over his mother's affections led him to fundamentally revise his theory of the origin of the neuroses. Based on his early clinical work, Freud postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as
Freud's seduction theory. In the light of his self-analysis, Freud abandoned the theory that every neurosis can be traced back to the effects of infantile sexual abuse, now arguing that infantile sexual scenarios still had a causative function. It did not matter whether they were real or imagined, and in either case, they became pathogenic only when acting as repressed memories. This transition from the theory of infantile sexual trauma as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for Freud's subsequent formulation of the theory of the
Oedipus complex. Freud described the evolution of his clinical method and set out his theory of the psychogenetic origins of hysteria, demonstrated in several case histories, in
Studies on Hysteria published in 1895 (co-authored with
Josef Breuer). In 1899, he published
The Interpretation of Dreams in which, following a critical review of existing theory, Freud gives detailed interpretations of his own and his patients' dreams in terms of
wish-fulfillments made subject to the repression and censorship of the "dream-work". He then sets out the theoretical model of mental structure (the unconscious, pre-conscious, and conscious) on which this account is based. An abridged version,
On Dreams, was published in 1901. In works that would win him a more general readership, Freud applied his theories outside the clinical setting in
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). In
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, published in 1905, Freud elaborates his theory of infantile sexuality, describing its "polymorphous perverse" forms and the functioning of the "drives", to which it gives rise, in the formation of sexual identity. The same year he published
Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, which became one of his more famous and controversial
case studies. Known as the 'Dora' case study, for Freud it was illustrative of
hysteria as a symptom and contributed to his understanding of the importance of
transference as a clinical phenomenon. In other early case studies, Freud described the symptomatology of
obsessional neurosis in the case of the
Rat man, and
phobia in the case of
Little Hans.
Early followers In 1902, Freud at last realised his long-standing ambition to be made a university professor. The title "professor extraordinarius" was important to Freud for the recognition and prestige it conferred, there being no salary or teaching duties attached to the post (he would be granted the enhanced status of "professor ordinarius" in 1920). Despite support from the university, his appointment had been blocked in successive years by the political authorities and it was secured only with the intervention of an influential ex-patient, Baroness Marie Ferstel, who (supposedly) had to bribe the minister of education with a valuable painting. Freud continued with the regular series of lectures on his work, which, since the mid-1880s as a
docent of Vienna University, he had been delivering to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the university's psychiatric clinic. From the autumn of 1902, several Viennese physicians who had expressed interest in Freud's work were invited to meet at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology. This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (
Psychologische Mittwochs-Gesellschaft) and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement. Freud founded this discussion group at the suggestion of the physician
Wilhelm Stekel. Stekel had studied medicine; his conversion to psychoanalysis is variously attributed to his successful treatment by Freud for a sexual problem or as a result of his reading
The Interpretation of Dreams, to which he subsequently gave a positive review in the Viennese daily newspaper
Neues Wiener Tagblatt. The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend,
Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians and all five were Jewish by birth. Both Kahane and Reitler were childhood friends of Freud who had gone to university with him and kept abreast of Freud's developing ideas by attending his Saturday evening lectures. In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud's work, Reitler was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in
Dorotheergasse, which had been founded in 1901.
Max Graf, a Viennese musicologist and father of "
Little Hans", who had first encountered Freud in 1900 and joined the Wednesday group soon after its initial inception, described the ritual and atmosphere of the early meetings of the society: in 1910 By 1906, the group had grown to sixteen members, including
Otto Rank, who was employed as the group's paid secretary. In March 1907, Jung and
Ludwig Binswanger, also a Swiss psychiatrist, travelled to Vienna to visit Freud and attend the discussion group. Thereafter, they established a small psychoanalytic group in Zürich. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status, the Wednesday group was reconstituted as the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society with Freud as president, a position he relinquished in 1910 in favor of Adler in the hope of neutralizing his increasingly critical standpoint. The first woman member,
Margarete Hilferding, joined the Society in 1910, and the following year she was joined by
Tatiana Rosenthal and
Sabina Spielrein, who were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of the Zürich University medical school. Before she completed her studies, Spielrein was a patient of Jung's at the Burghölzli, and the clinical and personal details of their relationship became the subject of an extensive correspondence between Freud and Jung. Both women would go on to make important contributions to the work of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society, founded in 1910. Freud's early followers met together formally for the first time at the Hotel Bristol,
Salzburg on 27 April 1908. This meeting, which was retrospectively deemed to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress, was convened at the suggestion of
Ernest Jones, then a London-based neurologist who had discovered Freud's writings and begun applying psychoanalytic methods in his clinical work. Jones had met Jung at a conference the previous year, and they met up again in Zürich to organize the Congress. There were, as Jones records, "forty-two present, half of whom were or became practising analysts." In addition to Jones and the Viennese and Zürich contingents accompanying Freud and Jung, also present and notable for their subsequent importance in the psychoanalytic movement were
Karl Abraham and
Max Eitingon from Berlin,
Sándor Ferenczi from Budapest and the New York-based
Abraham Brill. Important decisions were taken at the Congress to advance the impact of Freud's work. A journal, the
Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, was launched in 1909 under the editorship of Jung. This was followed in 1910 by the monthly
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse edited by Adler and Stekel, in 1911 by
Imago, a journal devoted to the application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural and literary studies edited by Rank and in 1913 by the
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, also edited by Rank. Plans for an
international association of psychoanalysts were put in place and these were implemented at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910, where Jung was elected, with Freud's support, as its first president. , Worcester, Massachusetts in 1909. Front row: Freud,
G. Stanley Hall,
Carl Jung; back row:
Abraham Brill,
Ernest Jones,
Sándor Ferenczi Freud turned to Brill and Jones to further his ambition to spread the psychoanalytic cause in the English-speaking world. Both were invited to Vienna following the Salzburg Congress and a division of labour was agreed with Brill given the translation rights for Freud's works, and Jones, who was to take up a post at the
University of Toronto later in the year, tasked with establishing a platform for Freudian ideas in North American academic and medical life. Jones's advocacy prepared the way for Freud's visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at the invitation of
Stanley Hall, president of
Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis. When Putnam and Jones organised the founding of the
American Psychoanalytic Association in May 1911 they were elected president and secretary respectively. Brill founded the
New York Psychoanalytic Society the same year. His English translations of Freud's work began to appear in 1909.
Resignations from the IPA Some of Freud's followers subsequently withdrew from the
International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and founded their own schools. From 1909, Adler's views on topics such as neurosis began to differ markedly from those held by Freud. As Adler's position appeared increasingly incompatible with Freudianism, a series of confrontations between their respective viewpoints took place at the meetings of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in January and February 1911. In February 1911, Adler, then the president of the society, resigned his position. At this time, Stekel also resigned from his position as vice president of the society. Adler finally left the Freudian group altogether in June 1911 to form his own organization with nine other members who had also resigned from the group. This new formation was initially called
Society for Free Psychoanalysis but it was soon renamed the
Society for Individual Psychology. In the period after World War I, Adler became increasingly associated with a psychological position he devised called
individual psychology. , Sigmund Freud,
Karl Abraham,
Max Eitingon,
Sándor Ferenczi,
Ernest Jones, and
Hanns Sachs In 1912, Jung published
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (published in English in 1916 as
Psychology of the Unconscious), making it clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud. To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it
analytical psychology. Anticipating the final breakdown of the relationship between Freud and Jung, Ernest Jones initiated the formation of a
Secret Committee of loyalists charged with safeguarding the theoretical coherence and institutional legacy of the psychoanalytic movement. Formed in the autumn of 1912, the Committee comprised Freud, Jones, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, and
Hanns Sachs. Max Eitingon joined the Committee in 1919. Each member pledged himself not to make any public departure from the fundamental tenets of
psychoanalytic theory before he had discussed his views with the others. After this development, Jung recognised that his position was untenable and resigned as editor of the
Jahrbuch and then as president of the IPA in April 1914. The Zürich branch of the IPA withdrew from membership the following July. Later the same year, Freud published a paper entitled "
The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement", the German original being first published in the
Jahrbuch, giving his view on the birth and evolution of the psychoanalytic movement and the withdrawal of Adler and Jung from it. The final defection from Freud's inner circle occurred following the publication in 1924 of Rank's
The Trauma of Birth, which other members of the Committee read as, in effect, abandoning the Oedipus Complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytic theory. Abraham and Jones became increasingly forceful critics of Rank. Though he and Freud were reluctant to end their close and long-standing relationship, the break finally came in 1926 when Rank resigned from his official posts in the IPA and left Vienna for Paris. His place on the committee was taken by
Anna Freud. Rank eventually settled in the United States, where his revisions of Freudian theory were to influence a new generation of therapists uncomfortable with the orthodoxies of the IPA.
Early psychoanalytic movement After the founding of the IPA in 1910, an international network of psychoanalytical societies, training institutes, and clinics became well established and a regular schedule of biannual
Congresses commenced after the end of
World War I to coordinate their activities and as a forum for presenting papers on clinical and theoretical topics. Abraham and Eitingon founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society in 1910 and then the
Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the Poliklinik in 1920. The Poliklinik's innovations in free treatment, the child analysis, and the Berlin Institute's standardisation of psychoanalytic training had a major influence on the wider psychoanalytic movement. In 1927,
Ernst Simmel founded the
Schloss Tegel Sanatorium on the outskirts of
Berlin, the first such establishment to provide psychoanalytic treatment in an institutional framework. Freud organised a fund to help finance its activities, and his architect son, Ernst, was commissioned to refurbish the building. It was forced to close in 1931 for economic reasons. The 1910 Moscow Psychoanalytic Society became the Russian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in 1922. Freud's Russian followers were the first to benefit from translations of his work, the 1904 Russian translation of
The Interpretation of Dreams appearing nine years before Brill's English edition. The Russian Institute was unique in receiving state support for its activities, including the publication of translations of Freud's works. Support was abruptly annulled in 1924, when
Joseph Stalin came to power, after which psychoanalysis was denounced on ideological grounds. After helping found the
American Psychoanalytic Association in 1911, Ernest Jones returned to Britain from Canada in 1913 and founded the London Psychoanalytic Society. In 1919, he dissolved this organisation and, with its core membership purged of Jungian adherents, founded the
British Psychoanalytical Society, serving as its president until 1944. The Institute of Psychoanalysis was established in 1924, and the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis was established in 1926, both under Jones's directorship. The Vienna Ambulatorium (Clinic) was established in 1922, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1924 under the directorship of
Helene Deutsch. Ferenczi founded the Budapest Psychoanalytic Institute in 1913 and a clinic in 1929. Psychoanalytic societies and institutes were established in Switzerland (1919), France (1926), Italy (1932), the Netherlands (1933), Norway (1933), and in
Mandatory Palestine (Jerusalem, 1933) by Eitingon, who had fled Berlin after
Adolf Hitler came to power. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1931. The 1922 Berlin Congress was the last Freud attended. By this time, his speech had become seriously impaired by the prosthetic device he needed as a result of a series of operations on his cancerous jaw. He kept abreast of developments through regular correspondence with his principal followers and via the circular letters and meetings of the Secret Committee, which he continued to attend. The Committee continued to function until 1927, by which time institutional developments within the IPA, such as the establishment of the International Training Commission, had addressed concerns about the transmission of psychoanalytic theory and practice. There remained, however, significant differences over the issue of lay analysis – i.e., the acceptance of non-medically qualified candidates for psychoanalytic training. Freud set out his case in favour in 1926 in his
The Question of Lay Analysis. He was resolutely opposed by American societies, which expressed concerns over professional standards and the risk of litigation (though child analysts were made exempt). Some of his European colleagues shared these concerns. Eventually, an agreement was reached allowing societies autonomy in setting criteria for candidature. In 1930, Freud received the
Goethe Prize in recognition of his contributions to psychology and German literary culture.
Patients Freud used pseudonyms in his case histories. Some patients known by pseudonyms were
Cäcilie M. (Anna von Lieben);
Dora (Ida Bauer, 1882–1945); Frau Emmy von N. (Fanny Moser); Fräulein Elisabeth von R. (Ilona Weiss); Fräulein Katharina (Aurelia Kronich); Fräulein Lucy R.;
Little Hans (
Herbert Graf, 1903–1973);
Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer); Enos Fingy (Joshua Wild); and
Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff). Other famous patients included
Prince Pedro Augusto of Brazil;
H.D.;
Emma Eckstein;
Gustav Mahler, with whom Freud had only a single, extended consultation;
Bruno Walter;
Princess Marie Bonaparte;
Edith Banfield Jackson; and Albert Hirst.
Cancer In 1917, Freud noticed a painful lesion on the roof of his mouth, but because it receded he did not seek medical attention. By February 1923, the growth had spread, which was when Freud identified it as either
leukoplakia or
epithelioma brought on by his smoking habit. Reluctant to give up smoking, he initially kept his symptoms a secret. Freud later consulted the
dermatologist Maximilian Steiner, who advised him to quit smoking but minimized the lesion's implications. Shortly after, Freud met with Felix Deutsch, who was also reluctant to tell Freud that the growth was cancerous. He too described it as an instance of leukoplakia. Both men told Freud to give up smoking, and Deutsch told him to seek surgical treatment. Freud was treated by Marcus Hajek, a
rhinologist whose competence he had previously questioned. Hajek performed unnecessary cosmetic surgery in his clinic's outpatient department. Freud bled during and after the operation and may narrowly have escaped death. At a subsequent visit, Deutsch saw that further surgery would be required, but he did not tell Freud that he had cancer because he was worried that Freud might attempt suicide.
Escape from the Nazis In January 1933, the
Nazi Party took control of Germany, and Freud's books were prominent among
those they burned. Freud remarked to
Ernest Jones: "What progress we are making. In the
Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books." Freud underestimated the growing Nazi threat and remained determined to stay in Vienna, even following the
Anschluss of 13 March 1938 and the outbreaks of violent
antisemitism that ensued. Jones, the then president of the
International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), flew into Vienna on 15 March determined to get Freud to change his mind and seek exile in Britain. This prospect and the shock of the arrest and interrogation of Anna Freud on 22 March by the
Gestapo finally convinced Freud it was time to leave. Jones left for London the following week with a list provided by Freud of the party of émigrés for whom immigration permits would be required. Back in London, Jones used his personal acquaintance with the Home Secretary,
Sir Samuel Hoare, to expedite the granting of permits. There were seventeen in all, and work permits were provided where relevant. Jones also used his influence in scientific circles, persuading the president of the
Royal Society,
Sir William Bragg, to write to the Foreign Secretary
Lord Halifax, requesting to good effect that diplomatic pressure be applied in Berlin and Vienna on Freud's behalf. Freud also had support from American diplomats, notably his ex-patient and American ambassador to France,
William Bullitt. Bullitt alerted U.S. President
Roosevelt to the increased dangers facing the Freuds, resulting in the American consul-general in Vienna,
John Cooper Wiley, arranging regular monitoring of Berggasse 19. He also intervened by phone during the Gestapo interrogation of Anna Freud. The departure from Vienna occurred in stages throughout late April and early May 1938. Freud's grandson, Ernst Halberstadt, and Freud's son Martin's wife and children left for Paris in April. Freud's sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, left for London on 5 May, Martin Freud the following week, and Freud's daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher, on 24 May. By the end of the month, arrangements for Freud's own departure for London had become stalled, mired in a legally torturous and financially extortionate process of negotiation with the Nazi authorities. Under regulations imposed on the Jewish population by the Nazis, a
Kommissar was appointed to manage Freud's assets and those of the IPA. He was Anton Sauerwald, who had studied chemistry at
Vienna University under Professor
Josef Herzig, an old friend of Freud's. Sauerwald read Freud's books to learn more about him and became sympathetic. Though required to disclose details of all of Freud's bank accounts to his superiors and to arrange the destruction of the historic library of books housed at the IPA, Sauerwald did neither. Instead, he removed evidence of Freud's foreign bank accounts to his own safekeeping and arranged the storage of the IPA library in the Austrian National Library, where it remained until the end of the war. ,
Hampstead, north London
blue plaque at Freud's Hampstead home Though Sauerwald's intervention lessened the financial burden of the
Reich Flight Tax on Freud's declared assets, other substantial charges were levied concerning the debts of the IPA and the valuable collection of antiquities Freud possessed. Unable to access his own accounts, Freud turned to
Princess Marie Bonaparte, the most eminent and wealthy of his French followers, who had travelled to Vienna to offer her support, and it was she who made the necessary funds available. This allowed Sauerwald to sign the necessary exit visas for Freud, his wife Martha, and daughter Anna. They left Vienna on the
Orient Express on 4 June, accompanied by their housekeeper and a doctor, arriving in Paris the following day, where they stayed as guests of Marie Bonaparte, before travelling overnight to London, arriving at
London Victoria station on 6 June. Among those soon to call on Freud in London to pay their respects were
Salvador Dalí,
Stefan Zweig,
Leonard and
Virginia Woolf, and
H. G. Wells. Representatives of the
Royal Society called with the Society's Charter for Freud, who had been elected a
Foreign Member in 1936, to sign himself into membership. Marie Bonaparte arrived near the end of June to discuss the fate of Freud's four elderly sisters in Vienna. Her subsequent attempts to get them exit visas failed; they all were murdered in
Nazi concentration camps. In early 1939, Sauerwald arrived in London in mysterious circumstances, where he met Freud's brother Alexander. He was tried and imprisoned in 1945 by an Austrian court for his activities as a Nazi Party official. Responding to a plea from his wife, Anna Freud wrote to confirm that Sauerwald "used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father". Her intervention helped secure his release in 1947. Freud's new family home was established in
Hampstead at
20 Maresfield Gardens in September 1938. Freud's architect son, Ernst, designed modifications of the building, including the installation of an electric lift. The study and library areas were arranged to create the atmosphere and visual impression of Freud's Vienna consulting rooms. He continued to see patients there until the terminal stages of his illness. He also worked on his last books,
Moses and Monotheism, published in German in 1938 and in English the following year and the uncompleted
An Outline of Psychoanalysis, which was published posthumously.
Death at
Golders Green Crematorium, London By mid-September 1939, Freud's
cancer of the jaw was causing him increasingly severe pain and had been declared inoperable. The last book he read,
Balzac's
La Peau de chagrin, prompted reflections on his own increasing frailty. A few days later, he turned to his doctor, friend, and fellow refugee,
Max Schur, reminding him that they had previously discussed the terminal stages of his illness: "Schur, you remember our 'contract' not to leave me in the lurch when the time had come. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense." When Schur replied that he had not forgotten, Freud said, "I thank you," and then, "Talk it over with Anna, and if she thinks it's right, then make an end of it." Anna Freud wanted to postpone her father's death, but Schur convinced her it was pointless to keep him alive; on 21 and 22 September, he administered doses of morphine that resulted in Freud's death at around 3 a.m. on 23 September 1939. However, discrepancies in the accounts Schur gave of his role in Freud's final hours led to inconsistencies between Freud's main biographers. A revised account proposes that Schur was absent from Freud's deathbed when a third and final dose of morphine was administered by Josephine Stross, a colleague of Anna Freud, leading to Freud's death at around midnight on 23 September 1939. Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at
Golders Green Crematorium, with
Harrods acting as funeral directors, on the instructions of his son, Ernst. Funeral orations were given by Ernest Jones and the Austrian author
Stefan Zweig. Freud's ashes were later placed in
a corner of the crematorium's Ernest George Columbarium on a plinth designed by his son, Ernst, in a sealed ==Ideas==