Freud's Professional Struggle

            Just as anti-Semitism created the impetus within Freud to succeed, so did the highly-competitive nature of the medical profession in fin-de-siecle Vienna.  Freud, in particular, had a difficult time climbing the ranks of the Viennese medical community.  Wishing to be a research scientist, Freud had been forced, early on in his career, to become a physician to pay his living expenses.  Freud did win a fellowship to study in Paris and shortly thereafter a fellowship to a University hospital in Paris and an opportunity to study under the great neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot.  However in 1886, when Freud returned to Vienna to open the private neurological practice, where Freud developed and wrote many of his theories, including those on psychoanalysis and The Interpretation of Dreams, the children’s hospital with which he was associated afforded little prestige.  Freud struggled for a decade to gain a University teaching clinic for the hospital, but failed.  Additionally, his greatest professional defeat was his failure to be awarded a professorship.  Freud worked for 17 years, where eight was the norm among the medical faculty, and never succeeded in having his achievements recognized.           

Isolated from the rest of medical community, Freud felt a driving urge to succeed in the field of neurological medicine and worked very hard to break new ground in the field.  Freud once compared his leaving Vienna with poignant ambivalence, “for one had still very much loved the prison from which one has been released,” and “Vienna oppresses me—perhaps more than is good.”*(p.9, Gay)  It is clear that Freud had to overcome extreme adversity in his professional life in order to succeed and be as prolific as he was.  So much so, that it must be questioned whether Freud would even have attempted to be as productive, successful or radical in his psychological research, had he lived in anywhere else but Vienna. 

• Introduction
• Anti-Semitism
• Freud's Professional Struggle
• Vienna's Political Situation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography