Born Sigismund Schlomo Freud on this day in what is now part of the Czech Republic, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), moved to Vienna at age 4.

Inspired by the philosophy of Johann von Goethe, Freud studied medicine and physiology. In 1896, he applied the term "psychoanalysis" for the first time and a year later he began his self-analysis.

"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world," he once said.

Freud was the first to theorize that childhood experiences are crucial to personality development. "Anatomy is destiny," he believed. In 1900, he published The Interpretation of Dreams, the revolutionary look at the meaning of dreams that Freud considered his greatest work.

From Freud, we learned about the id (primitive side of personality), ego (reality), and superego (conscious and ego ideal). "The mind is like an iceberg," he explained. "It floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books," he said about his revolutionary ideas that celebrated the power of the unconscious mind.

And the heart...

"In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart," he said.

More FREUD Quotations

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