Sigmund Freud was born in Frieberg, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic) 150 years ago on 6th May 1856 and died in Hampstead, London in September 1939. His writings, along with those of Darwin and Marx, constitute one of the three grand narratives that dominated 20th-century thought. Freud greatly admired Darwin—but thought little of Marx and Marxism. He deplored Marx’s failure to give credit to psychological factors in human nature and said of the goals of the Bolshevik revolution, “A transformation of human nature such as this is highly improbable.” Someone said to him that the Russian revolution would involve great distress followed by great happiness. He replied that he half agreed.

Freud did not set out to work in psychology. He wanted to pursue a career as a research scientist in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, did laboratory work in Vienna after his medical training and wrote many purely scientific papers. Indeed, his first extensive treatise (unpublished) was an attempt to express psychology in neurological terms, and his first book, On Aphasia (1891), was a neurological treatise . But a Jew could not make a living in neurological research, so Freud turned to clinical work, taking on the cases other doctors could not help. He and his mentor, Josef Breuer, applied various nostrums, including hypnosis and electrotherapy, but mostly they listened and began to make interpretations about the sexual fantasies of their patients. This material proved too much for Breuer (or, more accurately, for Mrs Breuer), who abandoned this line of work. Freud persevered, eventually coming to attribute neuroses to unconscious sexual impulses and conflicts. He initially stressed sexual abuse but moved on to attribute neuroses to both actual and fantasied sexual distress.

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