1. Theory of Psychoanalysis which is based on:
a) theory of the unconscious mind (also he didn't invent this idea, but put it into clinical practice and made it popular).
b) statement that libido or sexual instinct and desire (Eros or libido) is the primary motivational energy of human life and later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)- death drive (Thanatos) was added;
c) theory of sublimation, as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation;
d) interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious". Dream mechanisms: condensation, displacement, identification, composition, inversion, secondary elaboration;
e) "repression" as the key factor in the operation of the unconscious and defence mechanism, which together with other mechanisms (denial, idealization, splitting, identification, rationalization) manipulate, deny, or distort reality to protect the ego;
f) theory of unconscious primary process and conscious secondary process;
g) economic, homeostatic model of the psyche, the tendency of mental apparatus "to keep as low as possible the total amount of the excitations".
2. Topology of the psyche. In 1899 Freud developed his first topology of the psyche or previous topographic schema: conscious, unconscious, and preconscious. In his later work (1920, 1923), he proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: ego which operates on the Reality Principle, super-ego (moral component of the psyche), and Id, which operates on the Pleasure Principle, satisfying urges for food and sex.
3. Development of psychics. a) Personality is developed by the person's childhood experiences; b) personality develops during childhood through a series of psychosexual stages: 1) oral (birth-1 year), 2) anal (1-3), 3) phallic (3-6), 4) latent (6-12). 5) genital (12 -); c) the stage at which a person becomes fixated in childhood has a decisive influence on adult personality; d) Oedipus complex - boys passed through the phallic stage in which they fixated on the mother as a sexual object and on the father as a rival (In girls - Electra complex).
4. Clinical practice of psychoanalysis. a) Freud created the clinical practice of psychoanalysis as a dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst or “talking cure”; b) the goal of psychoanalysis, was to bring subconsciously repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness in order to free the patient from the painful thoughts and feelings; c) major points of Freudian therapy: Relaxed atmosphere, resistance, transference, catharsis, insight; d) he developed the therapeutic techniques, including the use of Free association and Dream analysis.
5. Culture. Freud as a materialist and naturalist conceived civilization basically in terms of the basic human instinct or drive.
6. Religion. He perceived religion, with its suppression of man's violent nature, restraint of the death drive, aggression and violence,
7. Creativity. a) Creativity is identified with the work of the unconscious, with the manifestation of the energy of the id and the power of libido by means of most beneficial defence mechanism- sublimation; b) Freud, following Schiller, wrote that we can gain access to "involuntary ideas" by relaxing our rational control over the imagination; c) fantasies are considered as Fulfilments of ambitious and erotic wishes, as an escape from inner conflict, as a "neutral zone", free space of pure imagination; d) creative writer is borderline neurotics and creativity is a substitute for neurotic symptoms; e) there is a strong analogy between artistic creation, child’s play, dreams, day-dreaming, fantasy and humour.
Honors and Awards: Goethe Prize (1930)
Sigmund Freud qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he took up work as a doctor at Vienna General Hospital and was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902.
Freud lived and worked in Vienna. In 1886 Freud resigned his hospital post, and entered private practice specializing in "nervous disorders".
Freud fled Austria to escape the Nazis in 1938.
In 1882 He married Martha Bernays, the granddaughter of Isaac Bernays, a Chief Rabbi in Hamburg. The couple had six children.
With Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938 Freud with his wife and daughter fled to England. Four of Freud's five sisters died in concentration camps.
Freud battled mouth cancer the last several years of his life, but continued to smoke cigars.
He died at the age of 83 in the United Kingdom in 1939.