Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychologist known as the father of psychoanalysis. After receiving his doctorate he set up a psychological practice in Vienna, where he developed his method of psychoanalysis to treat mental illness. Freud was the originator numerous psychological concepts, such as the unconscious, that were widely influential in the field's development. Because of his Jewish heritage, in 1938 he was forced to leave Austria to escape the Nazis. He settled in London, where he died just a year later.
Freud plays a significant role in the 1974 novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer, where Dr Watson engages him to treat Holmes' cocaine addiction.
==The Seven-Per-Cent Solution==
Holmes' cocaine addiction reaches a new low when he begins to claim that his childhood mathematics tutor, James Moriarty, is a criminal mastermind. Concerned for his well-being, Watson and Mycroft trick Holmes into traveling to Vienna to be treated by Dr Freud. Under hypnosis, Freud finally reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his father murdered his mother for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. It was Moriarty who informed Holmes and his brother of their deaths, and his tutor then became a dark and malignant figure in his subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would needlessly complicate his recovery.
Freud also assists Holmes in a concurrent investigation into the kidnapping of Baroness Nancy von Leinsdorf, with implications threatening a general European war.
In the 1976 film adaptation of the novel, Dr Freud is portrayed by Alan Arkin.
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Category:Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Meyer novels)