Freud Freud was born in Freiberg, on May 6, 1856, and educated at the University of Vienna. When he was three years old his family, fleeing from the anti-Semitic riots then raging in Freiberg, moved to Leipzig. Shortly thereafter, the family settled in Vienna, where Freud remained for most of his life. Although Freud's ambition from childhood had been a career in law, he decided to become a medical student shortly before he entered the University of Vienna in 1873. Inspired by the scientific investigations of the German poet Goethe, Freud was driven by an intense desire to study natural science and to solve some of the challenging problems confronting cont