Totem and Taboo (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and as a child moved with his parents to Vienna. He undertook the study and treatment of patients with neurological and emotional disorders, and in that setting he began to develop the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Among his major writings were The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays in the Theory of Sexuality, and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. He was awarded the Goethe Prize in 1930. Finally, after the German absorption of Austria in 1938, Freud, by then old and ill, moved to London to escape the Nazis' anti-Semitic persecution. The next year, he died, widely celebrated as the founder of the international psychoanalytic movement.