Sigmund Freud (frɔɪd , ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885 he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. Following the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.
In founding psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego. Freud postulated the existence of libido, sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt. In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.
Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities.
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In psychology, fantasy is a broad range of mental experiences, mediated by the faculty of imagination in the human brain, and marked by an expression of certain desires through vivid mental imagery. Fantasies are generally associated with scenarios that are impossible or unlikely to happen. In everyday life, individuals often find their thoughts "pursue a series of fantasies concerning things they wish they could do or wish they had done ... fantasies of control or of sovereign choice ... daydreams.
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In psychology, libido (lɪˈbiːdoʊ; from the Latin libīdō, "desire") is psychological drive or energy, usually conceived as sexual in nature, but also includes other forms of desire. The term was originally used in psychoanalytic theory, where the neurologist and pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud began by employing the term in reference to the energy of the sexual drive, later generalising the concept to refer to the fundamental energy of all expressions of love, pleasure, and self-preservation.
Through research into the molecular and cellular mechanisms that occur during critical periods, recent experimental neurobiological data have brought to light the importance of early childhood. These have demonstrated that childhood and early environmental ...
In the Freudian theory of the psychical apparatus, the introduction from the 1920s onward of the second drive dualism appears as a major turning point. The idea of a "death drive," first expressed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920), is generall ...
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Mind blanking (MB) is a waking state during which we do not report any mental con-tent. The phenomenology of MB challenges the view of a constantly thinking mind. Here, we comprehensively characterize the MB's neurobehavioral profile with the aim to deline ...