Is there any evidence that Freud was aware of the works of Marquis de Sade or Retif de la Bretonne, two authors who went about categorizing and listing sexual fetishes in the eighteenth century?

by vertexoflife
Subs-man

Short Answer: I don't know

Longer Answer: There is little evidence that I know of that Freud was influenced or aware by these people as much as he might've been influenced by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, an Austro-German Psychiatrist who categorised several sex fetishes in his Psychopathia Sexualis.

I'm sure Freud was aware of many different things that one might say is an aspect of Psychology that happened before Freud. But Freud didn't just magically create psychology one day because he was bored, he was searching for a medical profession that he could make a career off. I answered this thread a few weeks ago on the "psychological education" Freud would've had but I'll also copy the relevant bits below: :)

Freud originally wanted go into Neurology however, in 1885, Freud was in Paris about to start a fellowship under Jean-Martin Charcot, a well known French neurologist at the time who was looking into Hypnosis. Freud would later remark that Charcot was pivotal in opening up his eyes to the burgeoning world of Psychopathology (as well as Psychology).

[....]

By 1886, Freud had setup his own clinic in Vienna where he wanted to employ the ideas of Hypnosis to his own theories

[...]

Some Historians, like Elizabeth M. Thornton believe that Freud's cocaine addiction was the sole reason why he came up with the theories he did. I personally don't agree entirely with Thornton but that's just me. I personally quite like how Historian & Psychiatrist, George Makari introduces the reader to the character of Freud in Revolution In Mind: When the twenty-nine year-old doctor stepped off the train in the fall of 1895, he was a failure. Ambitious but poor, he had tried his hand at a number of sciences but nothing to secure his future. As he made his way onto the boulevards of Paris, he left behind a growing storm of controversy regarding his claims for a new wonder drug, cocaine. With hopes of marriage to his fiancée pressing upon him, the doctor accepted what now seemed unavoidable, he would have to become a university scientist, & would have to open a medical practice to earn a living. [...] Before that inevitable fate, he had applied to study in Paris. What he would find in that city would propel him forward on a long winding journey that led to one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th century. Or perhaps not?

Hopefully this helped a little, sorry for the short answer . I can go into more detail about Freud's early theories & followers as well as how we view Psychoanalysis today (up until 1995 of course), if you're interested?

Sources & Further Reading:

  1. Peter Gay's Freud: A Life For Our Time

  2. E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy

  3. George Makari's Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis