Sigmund Freud, born in Freiberg, Moravia on May 6, 1856, is one of the most prominent psychologists in the field of psychoanalysis. His father, Jacob Freud, was a wool merchant but an unfortunate economic crisis caused his business to fail and made the family to move to Vienna, Leopoldstadt in 1859 where Freud studied and lived most of his life. Freud studied medicine at Vienna University where he later received his doctorate in medicine. During his studies, Freud helped his professor, Brucke, with laboratory experiments. Due to this, Freud discovered neurons and received scholarship to go to Paris and learned more from Charcot at the Salpetriere Hospital. There, Freud was “able to observe the manifestations of hysteria and the effects of hypnosis and suggestion” (Chiriac), which prompted him to devise ideas of many theories of psychoanalysis. In 1886, Freud opened a small office to practice medicine and began to study his patients’ minds.
Under the pressure of stress and depression, Freud became a cocaine user since it “help[ed] him manage his depression, achieve a state of well being, and relax under tense circumstances” (Chiriac). Cocaine was not prohibited during that time and the harmful effects were not discovered yet; therefore, Freud used cocaine as a prescription for himself and others. Freud even suggested his friend L. Konigstein, an eye doctor, “to check on the extent to which the anesthetic qualities of cocaine might also be used with sore eyes” (Chiriac) while studying the impact of cocaine on medicine. However, a tragedy turned up when Freud tried to help his friend Fleischl-Marxow, who was a morphine addict, by telling him to use cocaine instead to ease the pain. Marxow not only gotten worse, he died in a painful death and the cocaine only raises the pain. Still, Freud contributed to the study of cocaine and its effects on the human body and in medicine.
While studying his patients, Freud also did self-analysis on himself. He then theorized...