Sigmund Freud: driven by a dynamic unconsciousness

Freud believed that we often act for reasons that are a long way removed from our conscious intentions

Freud’s influence on 20th-century intellectual life could hardly have been more profound (Getty)

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the founder of psychoanalysis, was born in the middle of the 19th century, an age characterised by rapid scientific and technological progress.

It seemed then that the power of human reason, allied with scientific methodology, would soon uncover the secrets of the universe, putting humanity fully in control of its own destiny. The enduring legacy of Freud’s work is that it undermined this confident view of the power and scope of human reason.

There is an irony here, in that Freud considered himself to be a scientist. He excelled at school, studied biology and then medicine at university, and opened up a medical practice in 1886. He quickly became interested in human personality, and by the turn of the 20th century had begun to develop the ideas that formed the bedrock of his psychoanalytic theory.