Sigmund Freud (1856-1939, b. Sigismund Schlomo Freud) was a 19th
and 20th century physician and neurologist who is widely
credited with (or vilified for) popularizing the concept of the
unconscious—the idea that human beings are not always aware of
their own motivations. Freud is often grouped with Nietzsche and
Marx as one of the great thinkers of the 19th century as in Paul
Ricoeur's Masters of Suspicion. Like Marx, his ideas were a
product of the culture in which he lived, and were an attempt to
come up with a scientific view of human behavior (in Marx's
case, of the behavior of groups, in Freud's case, individuals).
The "discovery" of the unconscious is often mis-attributed to
Freud. In fact, ideas about the unconscious were not uncommon in
Freud's time. Pseudoscientific hypnosis therapies were a popular
practice of the day. On the scientific front, early
psychologists such as William James and Hermann Ebbinghaus
attempted to describe unconscious processes. Freud offered a new
characterization of the mind