THE LIFE OF SIGMUND FREUD: 
BRIEF CHRONOLOGY 1856-1939

1856 Born on 6 May in Freiberg, Moravia.
   

1859 Move from Freiberg to Leipzig.  

1860 Family settles in Vienna.  

1865 Enters Leopoldstadter Gymnasium school.

1873 Hears essay  'On Nature' (attributed to Goethe). Decides to study medicine at the University of Vienna. Reads Oedipus Rex for final school examinations.
 
 
1877 First publications, on intersexuality in eels and on Petromyzon.

1881 Graduates as doctor of medicine.

1882 Engaged to Martha Bernays.

1882-5 Works in Vienna General Hospital.

1884-7 Researches into the clinical uses of cocaine.

1885-6 Studies under Charcot at the Salpetriere, Paris. Charcot provides 
new insight into hysteria and uses hypnosis.

1886 Sets up private practice; marries Martha Bernays. 

1887 Treats nervous diseases in his practice; introduces hypnotic suggestion.

1891 Writes On Aphasia, about language disorders and neurology.

1893-6 Works with Josef Breuer on case histories (including that of
'Anna O') which later become Studies on Hysteria (1895).

1895 Drafts Project for a Scientific Psychology, an attempt to work out a psychology based on neurological terms. Birth of Anna Freud (Dec 3)

1896 First use of the term 'psychoanalysis'; death of his father.

1897 Freud's self-analysis begins, leading to the abandonment of the
trauma theory of neurosis (developed with Breuer), recognition of  infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex.

1899 Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams  in December with the publication date of '1900'. Freud's favourite book containing dozens of dream analyses on the way to "the royal road to the unconscious".

1901 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; introduction of the 'Freudian slip'.

1902 Founding of the Wednesday Psychological Society.
   
1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality ; 'Dora' case published
(although the case dates from 1899).
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.

1906 Freud becomes friend and colleague of the Swiss adherent of psychoanalysis, Carl Gustav Jung.

1908 Salzburg: first international meeting of psychoanalysts.

1909 Freud and Jung travel to the U.S.A. and give the Clark Lectures: first lectures on psychoanalysis in America. (Freud is not enamoured of America; calls it a "big mistake".)

1912 Jung returns to U.S.A.

1912-3 Freud publishes Totem and Taboo  which explores how culture and society are rooted in the prohibition against incest, an assertion contrary to the development of Jung's studies.

1914 Secession of Jung from the official psychoanalytic movement.   

1915-7 Introductory Lectures given.
 
1919 Freud observes soldiers traumatized by the war.
 
1920 Death of daughter, Sophie. Publishes Beyond the Pleasure Principle which introduces new theories of the 'compulsion to repeat' and the concept of the 'death drive', as well as a revision of the 1900 theory of dreams as wish fulfilments. 6th International Psychoanalytic Congress held at the Hague (the first after the war)

1921 Publishes Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
 
1923 The Ego and the Iddeals with a new account of the structure of the mind, revising the 'conscious/pre-conscious/ unconscious distinction to be found in The Interpretation of Dreams.Freud diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Freud's grandson, Heinerle, dies. Freud writes: "I don't think I have ever experienced such grief.. Fundamentally everything has lost its meaning for me"

1926 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. Makes anxiety cornerstone of his developmental theory.

1927 The Future of an Illusion. A consideration of the origins and function of religion. Freud, here, explicitly states his atheism.

1930 Civilization and its Discontents A profoundly pessimistic account of the irreconcilability of personal drives and the demands of society.

1932 Why War? - an exchange of letters with Albert Einstein

1933 Freud's books, along with other psychoanalytical works, publicly burned by the Nazis in Berlin. "Against the soul-destroying glorification of the instinctual life, for the nobility of the human soul! I consign to the flames the writings of the school of Sigmund Freud"  

1936 Freud's 80th birthday. Honoured by the Royal Society in Britain who make him a corresponding fellow.
 
1938 Freud moves to 20, Maresfield Gardens, London NW3. Continues work, seeing patients and finishing Moses and Monotheism and An Outline of Psychoanalysis.

1939  Dies in London on 23 September .
 
1942 Freud' s sister Adolphine dies in Theresienstadt transit camp. Mitzi, Rosa and Paula transported to Treblinka extermination camp.

HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY
1856-1989  

1450-1750 40,000 to 100,000 executed as witches throughout Europe. Approximately 80% were women

1487 Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) published by Henry Kramer and James Sprenger

1678-1693 Boblig inquisition in Velke Losiny in the Sumperk region of Northern Moravia. 104 people burned alive

1856 Treaty of San Stefano ends Crimean War. George Bernard Shaw and Woodrow Wilson born. Heinrich Heine dies.

1859 Darwin publishes The Origin of Species. 3rd ed. of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. Suez Canal begun. Austria at war with Piedmont. 

1861-1865 AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

1863 International Red Cross set up at Geneva. 1865 Mendel discovers the laws of heredity. Abraham Lincoln assassinated. 

1860s Bismarck engineers movement towards German unification.

1868 First plastic (celluloid) produced by John W. Hyatt. Dry cell battery patented by Georges Leclanche.

1869 Franco-Prussian War.

1874  Safety Bicycle invented by A.J. Lawson.

1875-6 Telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Internal combustion engine designed by N.A. Otto. Battle of the Little Big Horn.

1877 Edison's phonograph. Russo-Turkish War.

1878 Mayerling Affair: heir to Austrian throne commits suicide.

1881 Assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Robert Koch discovers tuberculosis bacillus. 1883 Carbon-filament light produced by T.A. Edison and Joseph Swan.

1885 Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler construct first motor car.

1886 Statue of Liberty unveiled.

1889 Eiffel tower opened for the International Exhibition in Paris  

1894 The Dreyfus Affair : a wave of antisemitism sweeps France.

1895 First public cinema performance in Paris. Roentgen discovers X-rays. Pocket camera produced by Kodak. Oscar Wilde imprisoned for homosexuality.

1897 Karl Lueger, antisemitic mayor of Vienna, elected.

1898 First commercial wireless telegram transmitted.

1899 An East Bohemian girl killed reviving the superstition of Jewish ritual murders for the purpose of using Christian blood in religious ceremonies. A young Jew, Hilsner, was arrested and, despite his protestations of innocence, was sentenced to death. In a series of articles, the future first president of Czechoslovakia, T.G. Masaryk refuted the allegation, and urged a revision of the verdict. In a subsequent decision the court dropped the accusation.

1900 Blood groups discovered by Karl Landsteiner. Arthur Schnitzler's play 'La Ronde' causes a scandal in Berlin. Friedrich Nietzsche dies.

1902 Lenin writes What is to be done?

1903 Wright Brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk.

1904 Russo-Japanese War. Pavlov receives Nobel Prize for work on digestion.

1905 First Russian Revolution crushed. Sinn Fein founded. Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Binet's first intelligence test.
 
1907 Picassos Demoiselles d'Avignon

1908 Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina. Picasso and Braque found Cubism.
 
1912 War in the Balkans.

1913 First Charlie Chaplin film. Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu published.
   
1914 Passports made compulsory for foreign travel.

1914-18 FIRST WORLD WAR.

1916  Easter uprising in Ireland. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics published posthumously

1917  Russian Revolution. 'Balfour declaration' on Palestine.

1918 Founding of the first Czechoslovak Republic (T.G. Masaryk, President and Liberator)

1919  Eclipse expedition shows the bending of light by gravity, as predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Treaty of Versailles signed June 28. "Spartakus' revolt brutally suppressed in Germany

1920 First meeting of the League of Nations. Nazi party formed in Germany. Degrees first open to women at Oxford University
 
1921 Founding of BBC. Partition of Ireland.

1922 Mussolini rises to power. James Joyce's Ulysses published.

1923. Great Depression in Germany and Austria. Ruhr occupied by France and Belgium.

1925 Hitler's Mein Kampf published.
1926 General Strike in Britain.

1927 First 5 Year Plan in Soviet Union. Lindberg flies solo across the Atlantic.

1929 Stock Market crash on Wall St. Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
   
1932 James Chadwick discovers the neutron. Franklin D Roosevelt elected president of United States.

1933 Hitler gains power. Reichstag fire and book burnings in Germany.

1934 Austrian Chancellor, Dollfuss, murdered by Nazis. Mao Tse Tung sets out on Long March

1935  Leucotomy introduced by Egas Moniz. Antisemitic Nuremberg Laws passed in Germany.

1936 Beginning of Spanish Civil War. First BBC television transmission. SS Deathshead division established to guard concentration camps. Olympic Games held in Berlin

1938 Munich Agreement; Nazis annex Austria and occupy Czechoslovakia.

1939 Nylon stockings invented. Outbreak of Second World War. 

1939 Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest with a doctorate in theology, became president of independent Slovakia. An extremist hater of Jews, he allied Slovakia with Nazi Germany and, with strong objections from the Vatican, deported most Slovakian Jews to their deaths in the camps. He declared: "It is a Christian action to expel the Jews, because it is for the good of the people, which is thus getting rid of its pests." Monsignor Tiso was executed after the war as a war criminal

1941-1945 Holocaust. 6 million Jews and 500,000-1 million Roma murdered

1948 Communists elected to power in Czechoslovakia

1968 'Prague Spring' and Soviet/Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia. The period of political liberalization beginning when Alexander Dubček, a reformist, came to power in Jan 1968 was brought to an end August 21, when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact counties invaded and occupied the country, leading to a period of so-called 'normalization' under Gustáv Husák.

1989 Velvet Revolution 

1993 Velvet Divorce