120 years of psychoanalysis: On Freud’s footsteps in Vienna

Anna and Sigmund Freud in The Hague, 1920. (Sigmund Freud Copyrights).

“Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables”. No one knows the date Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the famed archaeologist of the psyche, scribbled this line in his notebook. It was in his elegant home (19 Berggasse, 9th District, Vienna), that Freud formulated his most important psychoanalysis theories and invited Viennese high society to recline on his famous couch. It was in these rooms that he wrote the majority of his papers, held his Wednesday meetings and smoked his famously infamous cigars. 19 Berggasse was Freud's place of work for 47 years. When the workaholic Freud did take a break now and then, he liked to go for a walk in today's Sigmund Freud Park in front of the Votive Church, or on summer's evenings visited the nearby Café Landtmann, and in winter Café Central on Herrengasse.

Sigmund Freud, 1906. Photo Max Halberstadt. (Sigmund Freud Copyrights).

It was in Vienna that Freud saw the famous dream that prompted his seminal work Interpretation of Dreams and altered the understanding of the human mind, its unconscious abyss and its sexual proclivities. That famous dream on the night of July 23/24, 1895, in Hotel Schloss Bellevue led him to the ‘interpretation of dreams’ – it was the birth of psychoanalysis. Published in 1899, Interpretation of Dreams did not find too many takers - it sold only 351 copies in 6 years and the second edition was published only 10 years later. The year 2020 marks the 120th anniversary of the publication of Freud’s famous basic work.

Freud characterised a new, revolutionary image of the human being and the success of his treatments and scientific papers spread his reputation far beyond the borders of Austria. ‘Freud mania’ took hold while he was still alive – and continued. While Freud's international reputation kept on growing, the Nazis burned his books. At 82, he was forced to leave Vienna in 1938 and fled into exile in London. Suffering from terminal cancer, Freud ended his own life barely one year later with an overdose of morphine administered with the assistance of his family physician.

Sigmund Freud with family and aunt Minna, around 1898 (Sigmund Freud Copyrights).

Freud’s memory is preserved to this day at Berggasse 19, the most important Freud location in the city. The Sigmund Freud Museum has been housed in his former practice since 1971. Thanks to Princess Marie Bonaparte, a French author/psychoanalyst and Freud’s confidante of many years, he was able to take all the furnishings with him on his escape to London. It is no longer possible to marvel at Freud's couch in Vienna, but now one can walk in his footsteps in the newly renovated private rooms of Sigmund Freud which is being opened to the public for the first time.

Berggasse 19. (Copyright: Alexander Wulz, Sigmund Freud Foundation).

More of Freud in Vienna: From October 2020, the Orangery at the Lower Belvedere will present 150 works by Surrealist Salvador Dali in the exhibition ‘Dalí – Freud’ that will include sculptures, photographs, films, books, periodicals, letters and other documents.

In 2021, Vienna will host the Neurology Congress at the Austria Center; in 2023,  the Psychotherapy Congress will be held at the Sigmund Freud Private University.

Freud on Netflix: Freud, an eight-episode drama produced by the Viennese production company SATEL and Bavaria Fiction for ORF and Netflix portray the early years of Sigmund Freud, who becomes entangled in a murderous conspiracy.  Each episode will last for 45 minutes. The Austrian director and screenplay writer Marvin Kren says, “I'd like to show a ‘Freud’ we don't know and have never seen in this way – a man on the search for recognition, between two women, between reason and drifting.” The crime thriller takes one on an exciting journey through Vienna at the end of the 19th century.

Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays at their engagement, 1882. (Sigmund Freud Copyrights).

Freud would have turned 164 on May 6, 2020. He has been dead for 81 years but his ideas about sexual behaviour, ego, id, unconscious, fixations, defence mechanisms, and dream symbolism, will never die.

All about Freud

• Freud’s birth name was Sigismund Schlomo Freud.
• Freud was nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times but never won any.
• He wrote 900 letters to Martha Bernays during their 4-year engagement.
• He owned a Chow Chow dog named Jofi.
• Freud’s ashes were placed in an ancient urn gifted to him by Napoleon Bonaparte. In January 2014, thieves tried to steal his ashes from London’s Golders Green Crematorium. The bid was foiled but the thieves severely damaged the 2,300-year-old urn.
• While studying zoology at the University of Vienna, Freud dissected several eels to find gonads of the male eel, a discovery that had eluded scientists for centuries. Freud never found the gonad.
• In 1925, Hollywood movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn offered $100,000 to Freud to write or consult on a film script about the great love stories of history. Freud declined the offer.
• In 1924, Freud turned down a $25,000 offer from the publisher of the Chicago Tribune to psychoanalyse notorious criminals Leopold and Loeb as they awaited their sensational murder trial.
• When Freud first met Carl Jung, they reportedly talked for 13 hours without stopping.
• Over 16 years, Freud underwent more than 30 surgeries for the cancerous tumour in his mouth. He never quit smoking.