THE LIFE OF SIGMUND FREUD
A
BRIEF CHRONOLOGY
1856 6 May, Birth at Freiberg, Moravia
1859 Move from Freiberg to Leipzig
1860 Family settles in Vienna
1865 Enters Leopoldstädter Gymnasium school
1873 Hears extract of essay 'On Nature' (attributed to Goethe) read out
at a lecture. This decides
him to abandon law as a career and
enter the University of Vienna
to study medicine.
1877 First publications. (On intersexuality in eels and on Petromyzon).
1881 Graduates as M.D.
1882 Engaged to Martha Bernays.
1882-5 Works in Vienna General Hospital.
1884-7 Researches into the clinical uses of cocaine.
1885-6 Studies under Charcot at the Salpêtrière, Paris. Charcot provides
new insight into hysteria
and uses hypnosis.
1886 Sets up private practice; marries Martha Bernays.
1887 Treats nervous diseases in his practice; introduces hypnotic suggestion.
1891 Writes 'On Aphasia', about language disorders and neurology.
1893-6 Works with Josef Breuer on case histories (including that of
' Anna O') which later becomes
Studies on Hysteria (1895).
1895 'Project for a Scientific Psychology'; an attempt to work out a psychology
based on neurological terms
(contained in the letters to his confidant
of the period 1887-1902,
Wilhelm Fliess).
1896 First use of the term 'psychoanalysis'; death of his father.
1897 Freud's self-analysis begins, leading to the abandonment of the
trauma theory of neurosis
(developed with Breuer), recognition
of infantile sexuality and
the Oedipus complex.
1899 November
The Interpretation of
Dreams published. Freud's favourite book
containing dozens of dream
analyses on the way, as Freud says, to "the royal
road to the unconscious".
1901 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Introduction of "Freudian
slip".
1902 Founding of the Wednesday Psychological Society
1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality ; 'Dora' case published
(although the events of the
case history date from the late 1990s).
Jokes and their Relation
to the Unconscious.
1906 Freud becomes friend and colleague of the Swiss adherent of psychoanalysis,
Carl
Gustav Jung
1908 Salzburg: first international meeting of psychoanalysts.
1909 Freud and Jung travel to the U.S.A. and give the Clark Lectures:
first lectures on psychoanalysis
in America. (Freud is not
enamoured of America; sees
it as a "big mistake".)
1912 Jung returns to U.S.A.
1912-3 Freud publishes Totem and Taboo which explores how culture
and society are rooted in
the prohibition against incest, an
assertion contrary to the
development of Jung's studies.
1914 Secession of Jung from the official psychoanalytic movement.
1915-7 Introductory Lectures given.
1919 Freud observes soldiers traumatized by the war.
1920 Death of Freud's daughter, Sophie.
Publishes Beyond the Pleasure
Principle which deals, in part,
with the paradigmatic actions
of Sophie's son Ernst in his
nursery. Introduces new theories
of the 'compulsion to repeat' and
the concept of the 'death
instinct' as well as the revision of the
1900 theory of dreams as
wish fulfilments.
1921 Publishes Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego .
1923 The Ego and the Id. Deals with a new account of the structure of
the mind, revising the one
to be found in The Interpretation of
Dreams. Freud diagnosed
as suffering from cancer.
1926 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. Freud makes anxiety the
cornerstone of his developmental
theory.
1927 The Future of an Illusion . A consideration of the origins of
religion. Freud, here, explicitly
states his atheism.
1930 Civilization and its Discontents . A profoundly pessimistic account
of the
irreconcilability of personal
drives and the demands of society.
1932
Why War?
1933 Freud's books (along with other psychoanalytical works) publicly
burned by the Nazis
in Berlin.
1936 Freud's 80th birthday. Honoured by the Royal Society in Britain
who make him a corresponding
fellow.
1938 Nazis invade Austria. Freud and his family manage to get exit visas.
Moves to 20, Maresfield
Gardens, London NW3. Continues work, seeing patients
and finishing Moses
and Monotheism and An Outline of Psychoanalysis.
1939 23 September
Dies in London from
the cancer that had dogged him since 1923.