Person

Freud, Prof. Dr. Sigmund (06.05.1856 - 23.09.1939)

Sigmund Freud is regarded as the founder of psychoanalysis and as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and psychology under Franz Brentano.

From 1874, Freud ran his own philosophy circle and, from 1876, worked in the laboratory of the physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. In 1879, he completed his doctorate and became a junior doctor at the University Hospital of Vienna, where he worked, amongst others, with Theodor Meynert in the psychiatric department. In 1885, Freud became a private lecturer; in 1902, an associate professor; and from 1915, he delivered his first lecture on an introduction to psychoanalysis.

Together with Carl Gustav Jung and through contacts with the University in Zurich, a young avant-garde movement within international psychiatry began to take shape. His theories of psychoanalysis were discussed in Vienna’s coffee houses and salons, and his presence drew the attention of the international media to Vienna.
Freud suffered from cancer from 1923 onwards and emigrated to Great Britain in 1938, where he died in 1939.

His most important works include "Totem und Tabu" (1913), "Das Ich und das Es" (1923), "Hemmung, Symptom und Angst" (1926) and "Das Unbehagen in der Kultur" (1930); he edited (since 1913) the "Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse" and also the "International Journal of Psychoanalysis".

His portrait appears on the 50-Schilling banknote issued in 1986.

https://d-nb.info/gnd/118535315

https://viaf.org/viaf/34456780

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG131655

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9215

https://ikmk.smb.museum/ndp/person/17530

05.08.2026