His parents had always believed in their son, since the day of his birth. A reason may be that right after his birth, his mother met an elderly lady in a shop who told her that Sigmund would become a great, important man. His mother, Amalia Freud, quickly transmitted to him her anxious anticipation of his future greatness. Of two sons and five daughters, Sigmund was her eldest and remained her favorite.

Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis.

Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud's work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as the American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, psychological man replaced such earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century's dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power of Freud's vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.