Sigmund Freud was acclaimed as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. He is renowned for his discoveries about the human mind, particularly dreams, fantasies and the role of the unconscious. Although many of his theories were (and are) considered controversial, his ideas revolutionized the way people think about themselves. The power of his insights has permeated nearly every discipline, including literature, art, and medicine. This article will examine the life, influences and impact of Sigmund Freud. He will begin by discussing who he is, his personal history, and then talk about his role in the development of psychoanalysis. Some of the individuals who greatly inspired Freud will be discussed next. Finally, we will move on to talk about some of those on whom Freud exerted an influence. Freud was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856, during the Victorian era. His father, Jackob, was a Jewish wool merchant, and his father's second wife, Amalia, was Freud's mother. He was the eldest in a family of three boys and five girls. When Freud was four years old, his family moved to Vienna where they remained until the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1933 (Gay, 1989). Freud distinguished himself academically at an early age. He was a prolific writer and an avid reader of the arts, humanities, and sciences. When he was seventeen, he began attending the University of Vienna to study medicine, which was one of the few opportunities offered to a young Jew. man in this period. He entered the program with the ambition of becoming a researcher, but was unable to do so because there was a quota for Jews in that field that had already been filled. Alternatively... in the center of the card... in addition to the unconscious, which he referred to as the "personal unconscious", there also existed a deeper, more universal layer called the "collective unconscious". ”. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is a part of the human psyche that contains images, thoughts and feelings shared by all human beings, organized into underlying patterns, and is modified by each person's subjective experience (Stevens, 1990; Wedding, Corsini , & Dumont, 2008). Using his own ideas about psychic structure, Jung began to develop his own theories on dream interpretation. Jung's theories on dreams were strongly influenced by those of Freud; however, Jung thought that dreams were direct messages and a natural expression of the unconscious. This was different from Freud, who believed that dreams were disguised realizations of repressed desires (Stevens, 1990; Lear, 2005).