Sigmund Freud Biography

Sigmund Freud, often called the Father of Psychoanalysis, was born in 1856 in Moravia, present day Chechoslovakia. He was born to Jewish parents, Jacob and Amalia (twenty years older than her husband), who moved their family to Austria when their oldest son was four years old. His father, having a brilliant mind and good sense of humor, worked as a wool merchant to make a living. Sigmund seemed to take after his father in that he …

…parts of the mind are continually trying to break through. They are trying to dominate the unconsciousness, but are held back by the ego. The ego, experiences three sources of threat; those from the id, those from the super-ego, and those from reality itself. In order to cope with these, it uses defense mechanisms. Some of the major ego-defense mechanisms described by Freud are: Denial, Repression, Regression, Projection, Reaction Formation, and Identification with an aggressor.