Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg, which was then part of Austria. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, afterward specializing in neuropathology. He married Martha Bernays in 1886, and the couple went on to have six children together.

In 1885, Freud became interested in the use of hypnosis for the treatment of mental disorders. However, after further investigation, he decided that hypnosis was not necessary for psychoanalytical treatment. Freud set up a private practice in 1886, and he began collaborating at this time with Josef Breuer, a fellow pioneer in the field of psychoanalysis. Their patients were mostly women suffering from nervous disorders like anorexia, neurasthenia (numbness), unexplained paralysis and fatigue, and so on. Freud developed a “talking cure” that was helpful in relieving his patients’ symptoms and, with Breuer, coauthored a book called Studies on Hysteria (1895). Freud postulated a relationship between repressed disturbing memories or thoughts and the emergence of neurotic symptoms. Psychoanalysis sought to discover the repressed material and bring it to the patient’s consciousness for processing.

In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. This work, elaborating Freud’s theory of the unconscious, is a cornerstone in the edifice of psychoanalysis.