Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856. He was born in a town called Freiberg, now Pribor, in the Czech Republic. Although he had a dream at a young age to have a career in law, he decided to become a medical student. In 1875, he enrolled at Vienna University. In college he had an inspiration, a German poet by the name of Geothe. Freud had a strong will to study natural science and to overcome some of the problems contemporary scientists had to face. Three years into college, he began researching the central nervous system in a physiological laboratory run by German physician, Ernest Wilhelm Von Brucke. He was so wrapped up in neurological research; he wasn't doing as well in college. In result, he had to stay in school three years longer then normal to qualify as a physician.
In 1881, after many long years at school and one year of military service, he received his medical degree. In 1883, after being urged to stop his experiments by Brucke, he spent three years at Vienna General Hospital. He was completely devoted to psychiatry, dermatology and nervous diseases. Later that same year, he was fortunate enough to be able to be a student of the French neurologist, Jean Charcot. Jean Charcot was the director of Salpetriere, Mental Hospital. At the hospital, Charcot was treating nervous disorders by use of hypnotic suggestion. With Freud's studies of hysteria, he began shifting his interests to psychopathology. Many people disagreed with his views on hysteria and hypnotherapy. It caused him some problems with Viennese medical professors.
In 1891, Sigmund Freud published, " On Aphasia", his first piece of work. It was an article on "the study of the neurological order in which the ability to pronounce words or to name common objects is lost as a result of organic brain disease". " Infantile Cerebral Paralysis," was the final article he wrote in neurology. Freud was fascinated with psychological instead of physiological reasons for mental illness.
