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Beginning with Freud's own work, the investigation of his personal life has become an increasingly important factor in the formulation of psychoanalytic theory. This is particularly so because of the very special nature of psychoanalytic
investigation. The most important single hazard to psychoanalytic objectivity is the fact that the psychoanalyst's traditional object of scientific observation, be it himself or his patient, is so inextricably bound with him in an interaction of mutual influences of emotional and irrational nature.
The importance of this kind of study becomes evident in many personal statements found throughout Freud's works. For instance, what he writes in the preface to the second edition of “The Interpretation of Dreams”: “For this book has a further subjective significance for me personally — a significance which I only grasped after I had completed it. It was, I found, a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father's death — that is to say, to the most important event, the most poignant loss, of a man's life.”
Freud's attainment of scientific objectivity with regard to—and in spite of—his own emotional experience is the most remarkable of all his achievements. Psychoanalysis' present-day interest in his life derives its force and importance from more than only the understandable general interest in the personal life of the founder of psychoanalysis.
Freud's personal history is an object of psychoanalytic investigation from several different points of view. From that of applied psychoanalysis, it is a particularly well-suited object for the study of the creative genius, since he is one scientific genius about whom there is available a substantial amount of self-analytic data. It is also an important part of the historical investigation of the origins of psychoanalysis, and it contributes to placing the theory under proper historical perspective.
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