Sigmund Freud synthesized an original and influential theory of human motivation (psychoanalysis). In this paper I will argue that Freud's creative genius depended on the expression of three highly developed and dominant tendencies and that the etiology of these three personality traits can be traced by examining the biographical details of his youth and adulthood. The three character traits discussed are: intellectual (need for systematic understanding and mastery), introspection (need for self-knowledge and conflict resolution), and courage (need for bold reaction to inner and outer resistance). Freud's life history is an example of the axiom: "Necessity is the mother of invention." It was precisely when Freud experienced a profound need to solve the riddles presented by human psychology that he originated psychoanalysis. A number of pressures impinged simultaneously on his person and triggered a Herculean fusing and deployment of these three highly developed abilities.
1. Intellectual
Freud spent his youth in a lower economic rural Viennese household and was raised by parents that did not engage in any intellectual endeavors or creative pursuits. However, they recognized the precocious, quick mind of their young son (the mother's first born) and fostered within him the love of books and learning, as well as the belief that he would achieve intellectual greatness. Much of the history of Western thought was consumed by Freud. In creating psychoanalysis he drew on his wide-ranging knowledge that included medicine, Positivism, Darwinism, literature, poetry, history, ancient cultures, mythology and many other areas. Psychoanalysis was the end-product of an act of creative divergent thinking, par excellence. If Freud had not been as intellectually driven or merely driven toward one field of inquiry, he would have never been able to construct a new way of conceiving human reality. Psychoanalysis owes its existence to Freud's voracious reading and to the value his parent's placed on learning and education.
2. Introspection
The creation of psychoanalytic theory required an inquirer that not only looked outward and closely listened to patients and looked backward to learn from history, but also one willing to look deep within. In the five years leading up to the advent of psychoanalysis (commencing upon the publication of his seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)), Freud questioned and developed his new ideas by reflecting on his treatment of hysterics with hypnosis and by undergoing an intensive self-analysis. His introspection was fueled by both his need to help his patients and by a need to understand himself. Love was on the line. Success at winning the hand of his fiancée required understanding his family history, overcoming strong reactions of jealousy, and changing career paths (abandoning the medical research he was passionate about and starting a private practice treating hysterics in order to earn a salary large enough to support a family). Freud succeeded at love. One of Freud's greatest legacies was to radically alter the modern view of the very nature of troubled individuals. Prior to Freud there was very little medicine had to offer individuals who suffered psychologically and the most extreme cases were deemed moral failures to be left to the church or as beings who's experience of life appeared so irrational that they were viewed as essentially non-human. Freud induced and revealed that everyone is in possession of the same mental structures and mechanisms and that those who suffer the greatest were not of a different kind, but merely farther down on a universally shared human continuum. Freud's profound need and ability to introspect deeply is directly responsible for a paradigm shift that has resulted in both our modern understanding of the human mind and in the humane treatment of those who suffer psychologically.
3. Courage
During Freud's youth, his father told him a story that impressed him deeply. An anti-Semite had once thrown his father's cap in the mud, the father picked up the cap and walked away. The young Freud raged internally, both at the injustice of the act and at the obsequiousness advocated by the story, and vowed to himself that he would never back down from a fight. Later in life, he concluded that the anti-Semitic bias and hatred he had received during his lifetime had served to steel his resolve. Freud worked closely with a colleague, Joseph Breuer, during the years in which they both treated hysterics with hypnosis. Breuer became unnerved by his patient, Anna O. (who later became known as the first psychoanalytic patient and the woman who coined the term "talking cure") and abandoned further use of the novel treatment method. He had been overwhelmed by the content of Anna O's. freewheeling narrative. In contrast, Freud was fascinated by the Anna O. case and all that he could learn from it. From the very inception of psychoanalysis, Freud's courage allowed him to overcome resistances (internal and external) and pursue lines of thought against all tides. Psychoanalytic ideas were radical and bold and Freud fought hard against hostile reactions that were launched from some members in the medical establishment. In addition, his courage also triumphed over internal resistances that he experienced during his self-analysis and when he published an account of his self-analysis that revealed extremely personal details. Freud viewed himself as an intellectual conquistador and it was solely due to his possession of a frequently tested fortitude that psychoanalysis was able to survive its birth pangs and persist long enough to establish itself.
Conclusion
Creative geniuses tend to be endowed with a stellar IQ and fortuitous brain structures. However, any attempt to explain the determinants of creative masterworks must, in addition to researching and accounting for biological underpinnings, examine at the level of the person and scrutinize their life history. Locating the life events that shaped the three catalytic traits discussed here (intellectual, introspection, and courage) has increased our understanding of Freud's creative energy. Freud gave birth to a system of explanation that influenced not only psychology, but numerous domains and aspects of modern culture. Psychoanalysis had the great fortune to be born of just the father it required.
