Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud trained as a neurologist in Vienna, researching cocaine (briefly, enthusiastically) and the nervous systems of eels before turning to the mystery that would consume his life: hysteria. Working with Josef Breuer, he encountered patients whose physical symptoms had no physical cause, and discovered that talking about traumatic memories could make those symptoms disappear. This was the birth of the 'talking cure.' Freud developed it into psychoanalysis: a theory of mind (conscious, preconscious, unconscious; later id, ego, superego), a method of treatment (free association, dream interpretation, analysis of transference), and eventually a philosophy of civilization itself. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) argued that dreams are disguised wish-fulfillments, the royal road to the unconscious. His theories of infant sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and the death drive scandalized Victorian society, and attracted disciples who spread psychoanalysis worldwide before many (Jung, Adler, Reich) broke away to form their own schools.