Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud trained in medicine and neurology in Vienna before developing the clinical methods and theories that became psychoanalysis. His work on dreams, repression, sexuality and the unconscious attracted a circle of followers and critics and helped reshape the language in which psychological experience was discussed.

Freud lived and worked in Vienna for most of his career, publishing works including The Interpretation of Dreams and building an international psychoanalytic movement. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, he escaped with his family to London, where he died the following year. His ideas remain influential and controversial across psychology, psychiatry and the humanities.