A Picture from a Recent Trip to Vienna I Somehow Forgot to Post

...before my residency's required psychoanalytic training ended and grades were in. This is the Freud Museum in Vienna, which used to be his flat and office, and is still a regular (nice) apartment building. (A hand-written sign taped to a current resident's door on the ground floor by the entrance explained in unsubtly annoyed German that the Freud Museum was upstairs.) I do have to admit a grudging admiration for Freud's self-promotion. At this point, I invite you to say pseudo-profound things in an Austrian accent about how my early life experiences led me to struggle against authority, I want to kill my father, etc. I loved Vienna and Central Europe generally, even including this museum. You will note I did grow a beard for the occasion, but at no point had a cigar.


The most interesting thing in the museum was the microtome on display, which he used to make brain sections. I imagine him thinking, "You can never get anywhere doing it this way...maybe I'll convince people I have the power to do the same thing by talking to people!" There was also a picture of him with fellow Viennese intellectual socialites, one of whom was an immediately striking and intense woman who turned out to be Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister. Also, in German the parts of the subconscious are just rendered in German (not Latin), as "Das Ich Und Das Es" ("The Ego and the Id") which somehow takes away some of the authoritative punch.