Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856â1939) was the father of psychoanalysis. In 1938 he fled the Nazis by traveling to England, where he died later.
He co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind, especially involving the mechanism of repression; his redefinition of sexual desire as mobile and directed towards a wide variety of objects; and his therapeutic technique, especially his understanding of transference in the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.
Freud proposed that the human psyche consists of three parts -- Ego, super-ego, and id -- and that defense mechanisms are an attempt by the mind to resolve conflicts between the super-ego and the id.
Contemporary psychology views Freud as having been an important and insightful contributor in the early days of the field, whose theories overemphasized sexuality at the expense of environmental influences on personality and psychopathology [1].
Sigmund Freud died of maxillary cancer at the age of 82.
References
- â Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333-371.