Paper

Life of Sigmund Freud

Gloria Berry

Professor Fredrick Douglass Dixon

March 3, 2012

Page 1

The Early Life of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Schlomo Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galicianparents in the Moravian town of Pribor (German: (Freiberg in Mahren), Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic. Back then it was getto in vinHis father, Jacob Freud (1815-1896), was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother, Amalie (nee Nathansohn), the third wife of Jacob, was 21. He was the first child of eight children and in accordance with tradition. His parents favored him over his sibleings from the early stages of his childhood. Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen. Freud was raised by the traditions and beliefs of a Jewish religion; although his attitude towards his religion was “critically negative”, he always considered himself a Jew. JewishVisualLibrary.org 2012

Sigmund Freud, was Jacob Freud’s third child. His family constellation was unusual because Freud's two half-brothers, Emmanuel and Philipp, were almost the same age as his mother. Freud was slightly younger than his nephew John, Emmanuel's son. After Sally died in 1852, a brief second marriage to a woman named Rebekka also ended with her death. Jacob’s third marriage, to Amalie Nathanson on July 29, 1855, produced eight more children. In addition to Sigmund, the first born, were born Julius, Anna, Rosa, Marie, Adolfine, Pauline, and Alexander.

Freud went to the local elementary school a Vienna ghetto. Although the name of the elementary school or whether he graduated was never mentioned anywhere. However he went on the attend Gymnasium (a secondary school in Europe that students attend to prepare for college) in Leopoldstadt, from 1866 to 1873. Freud was an intensely private man. He read...