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Sigmund Freud
1856–1939· Psychologist or thinker
Historical, now abandonedImportant in its time, no longer accepted.
Viennese neurologist (1856–1939) who founded psychoanalysis and became the 20th century's most famous, and most disputed, psychologist.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
Born in Moravia (now the Czech Republic), Freud practiced in Vienna for about 50 years. After studying hypnosis of 'hysteria' patients with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris (1885–86), he and Josef Breuer published Studies on Hysteria (1895). The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), theories of childhood sexuality and the id–ego–superego model followed. He wrote prolifically and policed his movement's orthodoxy. In 1938, after Nazi Germany annexed Austria, he fled to London, where he died in 1939.
Why it matters
He changed how people think about inner life: motives can be hidden, childhood shapes adults, talking can heal. Scientifically, most of his specific theories did not survive.
Legacy and how the work held up
Status: historical. His works fill 24 volumes in English (the Standard Edition), plus thousands of letters. Karl Popper called his theory unfalsifiable; historians such as Frederick Crews have challenged his methods and honesty.
Open questions
Why he dropped his 1896 'seduction theory', that real childhood abuse caused hysteria, is still contested: honest revision, or retreat from uncomfortable evidence?
Inside this (1)
Connections (5)
▸Sigmund Freud founded PsychoanalysisWell replicated
The connection
Freud built psychoanalysis from Josef Breuer's 'talking cure' with the patient Anna O. He swapped hypnosis for free association, named the method in 1896, and grew it into a theory, a therapy and a movement, with a Vienna discussion circle from 1902 and an international association from 1910.
Who showed it and when
Vienna, 1890s–1910s, largely in Freud's office at Berggasse 19, with Breuer, his confidant Wilhelm Fliess, and early followers including Adler and Jung.
The evidence
Freud's publications, his letters to Fliess and the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society survive and document the founding step by step.
Open questions
How original it was: Pierre Janet claimed priority on trauma and the unconscious, and research shows the Anna O. 'cure' was less successful than reported.
▸Id, ego and superego was proposed by Sigmund FreudWell replicated
The connection
Freud proposed the three-part model at 66 to explain inner conflict: an ego serving three masters, the id's drives, the superego's demands and outside reality. He compared the ego to a rider who must hold in check the superior strength of the horse.
Who showed it and when
Vienna, 1923, in Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id), the same year he was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw.
The evidence
Freud lays out the model and his reasons in the book itself, published in German in April 1923 and in English in 1927.
Open questions
Freud took 'das Es' from physician Georg Groddeck, who credited Nietzsche; Bruno Bettelheim argued the Latin terms made Freud sound colder and more mechanical.
▸Carl Jung: archetypes and psychological types broke away from Sigmund FreudWell replicated
The connection
Freud saw Jung as his heir: a gifted Swiss psychiatrist who could carry psychoanalysis beyond Vienna's mostly Jewish circle. But Jung redefined libido as general psychic energy rather than sexual drive, and was drawn to myth and religion. After his 1912 book and increasingly bitter letters, the two cut ties in 1913.
Who showed it and when
Vienna and Zurich, 1907–1913. At their first meeting in 1907 they reportedly talked for about 13 hours; they toured America together in 1909.
The evidence
Their roughly 360 letters, published in 1974, record the warmth and the collapse; both men later wrote their own accounts of the split.
Open questions
How much the break was about theory versus personality, authority and father-son rivalry; each side's account is self-serving.
▸Alfred Adler and the inferiority complex broke away from Sigmund FreudWell replicated
The connection
Adler joined Freud's Wednesday discussion group in 1902 but increasingly argued that social striving and feelings of inferiority, not sexual drives, shape personality. Freud judged this incompatible with psychoanalysis. In 1911 Adler resigned with several supporters and founded his own school, later called individual psychology.
Who showed it and when
Vienna, 1902–1911. Adler had become president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1910, shortly before the rupture.
The evidence
The society's minutes record the debates; Freud attacked Adler's views in print in 1914, and both men's letters describe the split.
Open questions
Whether Adler was ever Freud's disciple: Adler insisted he was a colleague who never accepted Freud's sexual theory, and the record partly supports him.
▸Erikson's eight psychosocial stages revised the stages of Sigmund FreudWell replicated
The connection
Freud described five psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital), centered on bodily pleasure and essentially complete by puberty. Erikson, trained in Freud's Vienna circle, kept the idea of stages but made them social, about trust, autonomy and identity, and extended them through adulthood to old age, eight in all.
Who showed it and when
Erikson trained in psychoanalysis in Vienna under Anna Freud from 1927 to 1933, then emigrated to the US; he published the eight stages in Childhood and Society (1950).
The evidence
Erikson's own book maps his first stages onto Freud's oral, anal and phallic phases, and he described his work as extending Freudian theory rather than replacing it.
Open questions
How far Erikson really departed from Freud: some see a friendly extension, others a quiet break that downplayed sexuality in favor of culture and identity.