- Freud had some strange ideas, which makes sense once you learn how strange of a man he was.
Whatever’s wrong with you, it’s all because of your mother. Although simplified, this theory is one thing everybody knows about Sigmund Freud, one of the most influential psychologist to ever live.
Yet, many people don’t know much more about Freud. And that’s probably for the better, because Freud was a strange, troubled, and frankly disturbing man.
Well, we can’t let you remain blissfully ignorant, can we? So, to celebrate this 169th anniversary of Freud’s birth, here are nine bizarre facts about the famous psychologist that you might end up wishing you never knew.
1. Freud Pioneered the Use of Therapy Dogs
Let’s start with something less creepy. We can thank Freud for the modern practice of using therapy dogs to help people with mental health problems.
Freud had a little chow-chow called Jofi. He would sometime allow the dog to sit in the room while he treated a patient, and he noticed they became much more relaxed with Jofi around.
So, if someone asked, he started letting Jofi join in on the appointments. When therapy dogs began to be researched seriously in the ‘60s, the practice drew support from Freud’s notes.
2. Freud Was Great for Couch Vendors
Freud never paid anything for the iconic couch his patients would lie on, as he received it as a gift from a previous patient. Nonetheless, Freud helped drive up couch sales.
After Freud’s notes about patients become more relaxed when lying down, using couches became a common practice in psychiatry. Furniture manufacturers in both Europe and the U.S. mentioned an uptick in sales — especially for couches without buttons or cushions that would distract a nervous patient.
3. Freud Was Okay with Gay Men (But Not Lesbians)
For his time, Freud was surprisingly okay with gay men. He considered male homosexuality a “neurosis” (to use his own terms) but he didn’t consider it to be anything of particular concern.
Female homosexuality, though — oh boy. That was a big no-no for Freud.
He believed that only men are able to make moral choices, and women never develop an inherent sense for morality. That why, in his view, every woman needed a husband to guide her right choices in life, which is not something lesbian women would have.
As such, he believed female homosexuality had to be cured through psychotherapy. This all gets even stranger when you learn that Freud’s own daughter was a lesbian — and his letters reveal that he might’ve preferred male company himself.
4. Freud Was Likely Molested as a Child
Freud’s preoccupation with sex may have some tragic roots. Sadly, it’s highly likely that he was a victim of sexual abuse in his childhood.
According to Freud himself, his father was a “pervert” who went after his own children. His actions, Freud stated, were responsible for the “hysteria” of his brother and sisters.
What about Freud himself? Well, he didn’t directly say he was molested, too, but it’s hard to see why his father would’ve spared him specifically.
5. Freud Loved Tobacco…
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” Freud famously said when someone asked what the cigars he kept sucking on symbolized. And the man sure did love his cigars.
Freud started smoking in his 20s and he never stopped. He started with cigarettes, but soon graduated to cigars which he sucked down at a rate of 20 a day.
Although his doctors warned him of the consequences of smoking like a chimney, Freud didn’t think his habit was ultimately harmless. We’ll find out soon how well that worked out for him.
6. …and Cocaine
Tobacco wasn’t the only substance Freud abused. He also loved cocaine.
We’re talking about a Scarface level of love for cocaine.
In the 1880s, Freud was so into cocaine that he deemed it a miracle cure and would freely hand out cocaine to his friends and family. He did, however, change his view after he tried to help a friend fix his morphine addiction by giving him cocaine.
That kind of worked, because the friend became addicted to cocaine instead. At that point, Freud stopped prescribing cocaine, but he did use it himself occasionally for another decade or so.
7. Freud Had a Prosthetic Jaw
Let’s get back to that 20-cigars-a-day smoking habit of Freud. Unsurprisingly, smoking like that isn’t healthy, and Freud developed an aggressive form of mouth cancer in 1923.
To try and treat the disease, he had 33 cancer surgeries over the next 16 years. Doctors had to hack off so much of his face that by the end of it all, Freud had been given a prosthetic jaw.
Yet, none of this got him to stop his cigar habit and he kept smoking to his death. Speaking of which…
8. Freud Committed Doctor-Assisted Suicide
By 1939, Freud was so sick and weak that he could barely move and was in constant pain. On September 21, he reminded his friend and doctor, Max Schur, that he had promised that he wouldn’t “torment Freud unnecessarily.”
Understanding what Freud meant, Schur had a discussion with Freud’s daughter. Afterward, he gave Freud three oversized injections of morphine.
With that, the psychiatrist fell into a coma and never woke again.
9. Thousands of Freud’s Documents Are Locked Away
Well, that was a lot — but there’s more. Sadly, we don’t have access to many of Freud’s personal secrets.
More than 75,000 of Freud’s personal documents are stored by the Freud Archives, his estate. The Freud estate has prohibited public access to the files, and even those held by the U.S. Library of Congress are off-limits until well into the 2100s.
You can’t help but wonder what is in those papers that they must be kept secret to this extent.