Encyclopaedia Entry – “Freud, Sigmund”, Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2014 - (Publication Cancelled).

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist and founding father of psychoanalysis. He was an important Modernist thinker, and his writings have been deeply influential in fields as diverse as psychology, science, philosophy, political science, and literary criticism. His work on the medical applications of cocaine also makes him a pioneer in the field of psychopharmacology, and his personal use of the drug may have influenced his professional development. Professor Jerome Neu writes that, “Freud's influence continues to be enormous and pervasive. He gave us a new and powerful way to think about and investigate human thought, action, and interaction. … [H]is writings and his insights are too compelling to simply turn away” [1992, p1].

Family and Career Freud was born into a poor, Jewish family on May 6, 1856 in the Austrian town of Freiberg, as the first of eight siblings. In 1859 his family moved to Vienna, where he would live and work for much of the following 79 years. Freud fled to England from Austria to escape the Nazis in 1938, dying on September 23, 1939 from a fatal dose of morphine administered at his own request. Freud was always a talented and dedicated student, enrolling in medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873. From 1876 to 1882 he conducted research at Ernst Brücke’s Physiological Institute, but upon engagement to Martha Bernays reluctantly shifted to a more financially secure medical career at the Vienna General Hospital. By 1883 Freud was working at Vienna General Hospital’s Psychiatric Clinic where, encouraged to develop an independent project, he set about “composing a seminal synthesis of the world’s medical literature on the uses and actions of cocaine” [Markel, 2011, p68]. He collected scientific studies of cocaine from medical practitioners such as Theodor Aschenbrandt and August Vogl, and was also thrilled by coca’s exotic cultural context as described by such explorers as Alexander von Humoldt. Freud soon ordered cocaine hydrochloride powder from the German pharmaceutical company Merck for experimentation. Freud’s experiments were partially motivated by his friend Dr Ernst von FleishlMarxow’s morphine addiction, and American physician W.H. Bentley’s claims that cocaine was a successful antidote. Freud’s treatment of Fleichl-Marxow with cocaine initially seemed successful, but soon Fleichl-Marxow spiraled into further addiction. Despite this failure, Freud’s study Über Coca (1884) erroneously supported Bentley’s claim. Through selfexperimentation Freud documented cocaine’s ability to soothe pains, cure indigestion, and

relieve depression and anxiety, but he quickly became a regular consumer. Dr Dave Boothroyd claims that, “During the period 1883 to 1900, it would not be untrue to say, cocaine entered every facet of Freud’s life and work…” [2006, p72]. From early 1885 publicity in European and American newspapers assisted Freud in boosting his prestige and being appointed as a lecturer in neuropathology at the University of Vienna. Then from October 1885 to February 1886 Freud worked in Paris under the great neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, whose teaching on hysteria began Freud’s interest in psychoanalysis. In Paris Freud frequently used cocaine, and some researchers suggest this may have increased Freud’s openness to new understandings of the subconscious. Freud subsequently returned to Vienna where he commenced psychoanalytic practice. By the early 1890s Freud was abusing significant amounts of cocaine, his letters to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss reporting related physical problems with his throat, tonsils and nose, and later heart arrhythmia, tension, pains, shortness of breath, and depression. This addiction accords with his self-diagnosed obsessional personality, and other compulsive habits such as cigar smoking. Evidence indicates that Freud curbed his cocaine use after 1896, and withdrawal from cocaine probably led to his period of alcohol abuse in 1899. While Freud’s most important work was published after 1896, cocaine influenced one famous dream analyzed in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) – “Irma’s Injection”. In 1892 Freud had contacted his friend Wilhelm Fleiss, a rhinologist, to assist his patient Emma Eckstein with her psychosomatic symptoms. Fleiss was an advocate of nasal reflexology – the idea that all physiological problems could be treated through the nose, with surgery and the application of cocaine. Fleiss operated on Eckstein, and in the aftermath she almost died due to Fleiss’ medical negligence. Freud interpreted his July 1895 dream about Eckstein as his subconscious exonerating him of blame for the incident. Freud also interpreted another dream, “The Dream of the Botanical Monograph” (March 1898), as being related to his work on cocaine.

Influence Freud would subsequently develop influential theories regarding the unconscious mind, sexuality, and human development, laying the foundations for psychotherapy. Amongst his most important publications were Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Freud also founded the International Psychoanalytic Association, which helped to spread psychoanalysis

internationally. In 1930 Freud was awarded the prestigious German Goethe Prize, and was later made a foreign member of Britain’s Royal Society. Having fled the Nazis for the safety of England, Freud died in Hampstead, North London, on September 23, 1939. At Freud’s request his friend and doctor, Max Schur, administered a fatal dose of morphine to end his suffering from inoperable mouth cancer. Many important theorists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would go on to cite Freud as influencing their work.

David Alexander Robinson See also: Altered States of Consciousness, Drug-Induced; Coca Wine; Cocaine; Fleischel-Marxow, Ernst von; Psychopharmacology.

Further Reading

Boothroyd, Dave. (2006). Culture on drugs: Narco-cultural studies of high modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Freud, Sigmund. (1974). Cocaine papers. Robert Byck (ed). New York: Meridian Books.

Freud, Sigmund. (1999). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Strachey, James (ed). 24 volumes. London: Vintage.

Markel, Howard. (2011). An anatomy of addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the miracle drug cocaine. New York: Pantheon Books.

Neu, Jerome (ed). (1992). The Cambridge companion to Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Storr, Anthony. (2001). Freud: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

David Alexander Robinson, is a Lecturer of History at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, where he teaches courses on global history, war and conflict, human rights, and genocide. His research interests include African history, international relations, contemporary social movements, political economy, and social theory.