Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis, a system of psychological therapy and personality theory that remains one of the most influential and controversial in psychology. Born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today a part of Czechoslovakia), he was the first son of Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, and of Amalie Nathansohn Freud, Jakob's third wife.

Freud's background was Jewish, a fact that figured importantly in his life and work, although he himself was an atheist—in his words, "a Godless Jew"—and was to write withering critiques of religion, which he considered a "psychological narcotic" (see, e.g., Freud, 1927, 1930).

Notwithstanding his birthplace, Freud for all intents and purposes was a Viennese. His family moved to Vienna when he was four, and he remained there until about a year before his death, when he fled Nazi Austria...