1856 – 1939
The taboo-breaker.
He laid us out, still conscious, on the operating table, and cured a generation.
He questioned our sense of self and persuaded us to engage with every layer of our lives.
He made us confront the past, and unveiled what we’d repressed in our childhood years.
He doggedly pursued his research; founded an entirely new sphere of analysis.
He enriched psychology with a different kind of science.
He dared to challenge the prevailing paradigm and expose our psychological problems and mysteries.
He encouraged us to understand our sexualities.
He was a pioneer of the unconscious.
He illuminated the galleries of the human mind: the dark side of the moon.
He was able to make connections that nobody had made before.
He became famous for deciphering the language of dreams.
His ideas caused an earthquake yet he led a very plain life.
He enabled us to better understand our souls, from which a greater tolerance and mutual respect inevitably followed.
His was an empathetic art; the Nazis who occupied Austria duly burned his writings and expelled him from Vienna.
He died in exile in London, where he had fled in 1938.
As his friend Zweig said, ‘There is more to Freud than meets the eye.’
