Why Not Learn About Sigmund Freud?

Few thinkers have marked pop culture more than Sigmund Freud, whose strange theories, intense personality and dabbling in dreams eventually led to a revolution in society. His many ideas, such as the death wish, the unconscious desire for one’s own death as a product of shame and guilt, or his classification of defence mechanisms, were so completely weird and unique that they soon rocketed him to world-wide acclaim, to the point where Freud turned down $100,000 in 1925 to a Hollywood mogul for script consultation.

But firstly, who was Sigmund Freud?

Born in Frieberg, Moravia in 1856, Freud was a young and bright Jewish boy living in a world of antisemitism. Not only this, Freud had a strange family constellation. His biological mother was the same age as his half-brother Philip, the product of his fathers second marriage. Sigmund also held a deep affection for his mother that was well-reciprocated. Freud would also experience strange dreams in which he wished his real father was dead and that Philip would be his real father. The youth of his mother and the reported abuse of his father likely contributed to a strange family dynamic that would complement, if not dominate, Freud’s psychological theory.

As Freud turned 4, Darwin published the Origin of Species, which would radically change the common conception of man from a being made…