Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in what is now Pribor, Czech Republic. When he was four years old, Sigmund's family moved to Vienna, and he lived there until the very last year of his life. Sigmund was the first of seven children and was always his mother's favorite. Growing up Freud was extermely ambitious and intelligent. In 1873, he entered the Vienna University and began to study medicine. There he was driven by a desire to study natural science, and tried to solve questions that plagued the scientists of the day. He then received his medical degree, but remained at the university as a demonstrator in the physiological laboratory. In 1886, Sigmund Freud married Martha Bernays, and he reluctantly gave up his physiological research so he could start a private practice in neurology- he needed the money. .
From 1895 to 1900 Freud developed many of his ideas that would later be the basis for his psychoanalytic doctrine. In 1981 Freud published his first work, On Aphasia. In this work he studied a neurological disorder in which the ability to pronounce words or to name common objects is lost because of an organic brain disease. Soon Freud developed his idea of free association. He based his theory on observations of his patients and self-analysis. With the help of free association, Freud believed that he was able to uncover forgotten memories of his patients. Patients would spontaneously report the first word or image that came to their mind when prompted. In his book, Studies on Hysteria, Freud described several of his studies. Its publication, in 1895, marked the beginning of psychoanalysis. In 1900 Freud published his most well known book, The Interpretation of Dreams. Additionally, Freud was gaining international recognition and developing many of his thoughts. .
One of Freud's ideas was that personality and behavior are the result of a constant interplay between conflicting psychological forces.