Theorist - Research Paper Example

Freud was born in 1856 in to a family that consisted of his father and his third wife. At that time Freud was the first child born by this union which afterward would bring seven brothers and sisters. An interesting point to make is that he also had half-brothers who were similar in age to his mother and Freuds nephew was a bit older than he was at this time. (Rowel, 1999-2009). The experience of living in this type of family dynamics may have given rise to his interested in how children were developed.

Freud was a genius and a deep thinker. As he was growing up he studied Shakespeare before he was 10 years old, and during his adolescence he was able to listen to a lecture by the great philosopher Goethe which was said to have made a great impression on him (Rowel). Freud studied at Vienna University and majored in medicine. He was particularly interested in the nervous system at that time. He later married and had six children with his wife Martha. As he set up practice, his first area of study was nervous disorders and he wrote extensively on cocaine (Rowel).

Freud coined the word "psychoanalysis" and this is what he is most famous for beyond his look at child development. When his father died in 1897 it caused sever emotional challenges for Freud and he began to self-analyze himself through his dreams. Freud later became a psychiatrist and developed his structural theory after work within a mental institution. Freud published a book in 1923 that he called, "The Ego and Id" which many people suggest was the beginning of his structural theory. Most people will recognize his association with the id, ego and superego whether they agree with him or not.

Freud believed that the id, ego and superego formed together to help a person in their personality. As he developed this understanding and applied it to child development he found that children usually went through several stages that had something to do with their