Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, the theory and method of treatment built on the unconscious mind, free association and the interpretation of dreams.

Born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now Příbor in the Czech Republic), to a Jewish family, he qualified in medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881 and opened a private practice there in 1886. His landmark book Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams) was issued by Franz Deuticke in November 1899 with the date 1900 on its title page. It was followed by The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Later works include Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930), translated by Joan Riviere as Civilization and Its Discontents in the same year. After the annexation of Austria in 1938 Freud left Vienna for London, where he spent his last year at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, now the Freud Museum London. He died on 23 September 1939.

In Britain his works were published by the Hogarth Press of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, a leading publisher of psychoanalysis, which later issued the 24-volume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works (1953 to 1974), edited by James Strachey with Anna Freud.

For collectors

The German first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams is the scarcest major Freud first: Deuticke printed 600 copies, which took eight years to sell out. The first English translation, by A. A. Brill, was published by Macmillan in 1913. English collectors also look for the Hogarth Press edition of Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), issued under the imprint of Leonard and Virginia Woolf with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.