Jacob Freud

Jacob Koloman Freud (1815–1896) was the father of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

Born in town of Tysmenytsia in Austrian Galicia, and from a Hasidic background though himself an enlightened Jew of the Haskalah, he mainly earned his living as a wool merchant.

Jacob Freud married three times, with two children coming from his first marriage, and eight children from his third marriage to Amalia Freud, twenty years his younger. His eldest son from his first marriage became a father a year before Sigmund - the first son of his third marriage - was born; so that the latter was an uncle at birth, with his nephew John a constant (and older) playmate in his early years.Ernest Jones speculates that the unusual family background may have prompted Sigmund - the eldest but third son - into an early interest in family dynamics.

By all accounts, Jacob Freud was a genial, unassuming character with a "Micawberish" streak of optimism: Sigmund would write warmly of "his characteristic mixture of deep wisdom and fantastic lightheartedness". Yet there is evidence that Jacob's meekness in the face of anti-Semitic bullying also disturbed Sigmund profoundly. Much of the latter's ambition, his combativeness, and his subsequent quest for powerful father figures such as Ernst Brücke and Josef Breuer, may be traced back to his ambivalence about his own yielding and 'vague' father.

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