ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author introduces Sigmund Freud's neuroscientific writings to the reader, in order to give an indication of their scope, their scientific merit, their historical importance, and-especially-their implications for psychoanalysis. The author classifies Freud's neuroscientific works into thematic groups, and provides comments on each of the major themes. The first phase of Freud's neuroscientific activity from 1877 to 1888 was devoted to histological and anatomical research. During the cocaine period Freud gradually moved away from histology and anatomy, towards the problems of clinical neurology. Freud conducted his clinical research in this field as Director of the Neurological Department of the Institute for Children's Diseases in Vienna, during the last decade of the century. Freud's classification imposed a degree of order on half a century of chaos, and his correlations between clinical observation and neuropathology expressed concepts that are still in the vanguard of critical thinking about cerebral palsy today.
