Psychobabble

I thought that might get your attention. I was at my new favourite, small London museum yesterday – Freud’s house in Hampstead.

Having a BA in psychology I suppose I once knew the doctrinal differences between Adler, Freud and Jung but I have forgotten. The human story of the Freud family is much more interesting. Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, the eldest of eight children, in Moravia. The family moved to Vienna where SF excelled at his studies. (He was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek) and started work as a doctor. He made his move in 1886, setting up in private practice and getting married. Now we can fast forward to 1938 and the Anschluss. Even then SF was slow to recognise he had to leave but when the Gestapo interrogated his daughter, Anna, he changed his mind. Four of his sisters who remained were murdered in the Holocaust.

Getting out of Nazi Germany was not a simple matter but a patient who herself became a psychoanalyst (SF invented the term in 1896) was Princess Marie Bonaparte. She was rich in her own right and married to Prince George of Greece and Denmark. Their nephew, Philip, married Queen Elizabeth, but I digress. By taking out her cheque book she got exit papers for the Freud family and friends, seventeen in all. She also arranged for the contents of the house in Vienna to be shipped to London. This is what makes the museum so interesting. Little has been changed since SF died in 1939. He smoked cigarettes and cigars and succumbed to cancer. Interestingly in the light of recent debate about assisted dying, as it is euphemistically termed, he made a deal with his wife and daughter and they gave him three big doses of morphine. Freud had been a user of cocaine and at one point recommended it as a cure for addiction to morphine. He was also addicted to smoking and thought it was an alternative to masturbation. Surely it is a substitute for breast feeding?

A home movie that runs for twenty-five minutes is not to be missed. It was shot in Austria, Paris and London and has a commentary by his daughter, Anna. Warning: it has high canine content.

All I can remember of my course at Durham is what Freud said came between Fear and Sex; Fünf.