When you think about psychology, Sigmund Freud, is probably one of the first people that come to your mind. He is Austrian although he was born in what is now known as the Czech Republic. As a psychoanalyst he originated the concept of humans behavior. He says that three parts, the id, the super ego and the ego together form someones personality. But thinking about psychology you might even know his daughter Anna who also became a famous psychologist herself. As there are always interesting facts to be found I thought it would be Idea to present to you 5 of them.
The First fact that I want to tell you about is that Sigmund Freud was a polyglot, that means that he spoke more languages than the average. In the case of Sigmund Freud the languages were German, Italian, Greek, English, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Latin and also a bit of French. But most of his work he published in German which is his mother-tongue.
The second fact is that he hated the US that might sound weird to most as the US is famous for their great lifestyle and the American dream which is why most of us at least once in their life dreamed about moving there. Sigmund Freud hated the US that much that when he had the opportunity to move there to flee the National socialist Austria previous to the second world war he refused. Luckily Marie Bonaparte, The great-granddaughter of Napoleon offered him to move to London which he did accept.
The next fact is quite weird for us as Cocaine now is one of the illegal hard drugs. But back then Cocaine was a widely spread legal drug. And Sigmund Freud was a big fan of it and wrote articles about how great this drug is. Funny enough this lead to a hype which caused a cocaine plague all over Europe and the US. Later on Freud got clean because he noticed the drug might not be all to great.
Sadly Freud was also addicted to nicotine. After he started smoking in his twenties he never gave this habit up because he thought that it helped him to be productive and creative. On some days he smoked over twenty cigars. Doctors always warned him about the effects but him not listening or ignoring them led to him having 34 surgeries and also a prosthesis because they had to take away big parts of his mouth as they were cancerous.
The last fact happened long after his death in the year 2014. Freud died in 1939 and was cremated his ashes then where put in a 2300 year old Greek urn that he got as a gift from Marie Bonaparte. Later on when his wife died her ashes got added to it. The urn is stored in London’s Golders Green Crematorium and in 2014 there was an attempt to steal it luckily it failed but nonetheless the urn got visible damage from it.
I hope that this article provided you with some interesting facts about the founder of the psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and that you have learned something new about him. If this article sparked some interest about him and you are in Vienna you should definitely visit the Sigmund Freud museum which is also his old doctors office.