Freud

- Season 1

(1984)

In the Name of the Gods": Ailing Sigmund Freud, his wife Martha, and daughter Anna settle into a new home in London after being forced to flee Austria. Flashbacks recall Freud's early professional life, ambitions to do important work, and engagement to Martha, whose sister Minna is also engaged. Freud experiments with cocaine as a cure for morphine addiction and other uses, prompted especially by his relationship with Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow.

Freud goes to Paris to study with Jean-Marin Charcot, who has been experimenting with hypnosis to treat patients with "hysterical" neuroses. Returning to Vienna, his advocacy of Charcot's techniques is largely rejected, especially by his superior, Theodor Meynert. With the aid of Josef Breuer he begins to use hypnosis to treat patients, in particular the (fictional) Baroness von Lieben. His work leads him to begin investigating the role of dreams and repression of memories.

Through his practice, self-examination, and friendships with Wilhelm Fliess and Breuer, Freud develops his concepts of the unconscious and the role of desire, beginning to posit sexuality as a source of psychic conflict and to develop his "seduction theory."

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In his seventies, Freud is persecuted by the Nazis, and leaves Vienna for England.