Sigismund Schlomo Freud (aka Sigmund Freud) 1856-1939 was Jewish. One of the leading scientific minds of his time, Freud was the founder of psychoanalytic school of psychology.
Freud was the first of eight childern born to a 41 year old father and a 21 year old mother. Freud's parents saw the incredible intellect of his son and although poor sacraficed everything to ensure that he had a proper education.
Freud has been influential in two related but distinct ways:
1) He simultaneously developed a theory of how the human mind is organized and operates internally, and
2) A theory of how human behavior both conditions and results from how the human mind is organized.
These to theories led him to favor certain clinical techniques for attempting to help cure mental illness. He also theorized that personality is developed by the person's childhood experiences.
He In his later work, Freud proposed that the psyche could be divided into three parts: The Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id.
The id is the impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and only takes into account what it wants and disregards all consequences.
The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation.
The ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical impulsiveness of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego; it is the part of the psyche that is, usually, reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, it may employ defense mechanisms including denial, repression, and displacement.
The theory of ego defense mechanisms has received empirical validation, although is still argued about even today.
In his later years, the Nazis came to power and burned most of Freud's books. He left Germany in 1938 and moved to England. In 1939, with the help of his friend, Max Schur, Freud committed suicide