Extinction

Freud

We will briefly explore Freud by looking at some facts and myths regarding the neurologist. And if you immediately had a vision of underwear when you read the word "brief" you will really enjoy Freud! Freud lived and died a passionate scientist. He is one of the most well known writers of psychology and remain controversial to this day. On the 75th anniversary of his death, learn 10 surprising facts about the neurologist known as the father of modern psychoanalysis.

Freud’s death may have been a physician-assisted suicide.

By the summer of 1939, Freud was frail and suffering intense pain from terminal, inoperable mouth cancer. On September 21, 1939, Freud grasped the hand of his friend and doctor, Max Schur, and reminded him of his earlier pledge not to “torment me unnecessarily.” He added, “Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense.” After receiving the permission of Freud’s daughter, Anna, Schur injected the first of three heavy morphine doses. Freud slipped into a coma and never awoke.

His chain-smoking led to more than 30 cancer surgeries.

Freud became addicted to tobacco after lighting up his first cigarettes in his twenties. His daily constitutionals always included stopovers at a local tobacco store, and after graduating to cigars, he often smoked more than 20 of them a day. In spite of the warnings from doctors about his chain-smoking, Freud believed the habit enhanced his productivity and creativity. After the discovery of a cancerous tumor inside Freud’s mouth in 1923, doctors removed a large part of his jaw. Although he underwent 33 additional surgeries over the next 16 years and had a large prosthesis inserted to separate his sinus and jaw, Freud never quit smoking.

Freud once thought cocaine was a miracle drug.

In the 1880s, Freud grew interested in a little-known, legal drug being used by a German military doctor to rejuvenate exhausted troops—cocaine. Freud experimented with the drug and found his digestion and spirits improved after drinking water laced with dissolved cocaine. He distributed doses to his friends and future wife and touted the drug’s therapeutic benefits in an 1884 paper “On Coca,” which he called ”a song of praise to this magical substance.” However, when Freud gave cocaine to close friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to wean him from his morphine addiction and relieve chronic pain, his friend instead developed a cocaine addiction. With news of other addictions and overdose deaths spreading, Freud stopped advocating cocaine’s medical benefits but continued to use the drug intermittently for migraines, nasal inflammation and depression until the mid-1890s.

An epic change in psychology.