Joe Mama Senior Paper Sigmund Freud was the first of six children to be born into his middle class, Jewish family. His father was a wool merchant, and was the provider for the family. From the time Freud was a child, he pondered theories in math, science, and philosophy, but in his teens, he took a deep interest in what he later called psychoanalysis. He wanted to discover how a person’s mind works, so he began to explore the conscious and unconscious parts of one’s psyche. Freud’s parents and siblings were directly involved in allowing him to pursue this unexplored area of psychology. He was given his own room so that he could study his books in silence, and was only disturbed when it was time to eat. Freud eventually married Martha Bernays. She was cooperative and completely subservient to her husband. She was simply filling a role that the society during that time insisted was proper for all women. Freud himself derived his attitudes toward women and his beliefs about the roles of individual sexes from personal experiences in the strict culture of the time. In the middle to late eighteen hundreds, Central European society distinguished clearly between the roles of men and women. Cultural norms dictated that men be responsible for work outside of the home, and the financial well being of the family, while the women’s responsibilities were in the home and with the children. With these specific gender roles came the assumption of male dominance and female submission. Females were pictured as serene, calm, creatures that were lucky to have the love and protection of their superior husbands. It is in this form of the family where most children first learn the meaning and practice of hierarchical, authoritarian rule. Here is where they learn to accept group oppression against themselves as non-adults, and where they learn to accept male supremacy and the group oppression of women. Here is where they learn that it ...
