West London’s Hampstead, with its redbrick homes hidden from excessive road visitors, jogs my memory of how pervasive British city planning is. The neighborhood is eerily just like lots of these in Toronto—the place I grew up—which meant strolling the green-canopied streets felt extra congenial to my idea of “residence” than my condominium in Manhattan did. This introspect felt acceptable earlier than touring the Sigmund Freud Museum, which, within the fall of 2022, I visited. Whereas there was an indication disrupting its hedging, the Victorian house-museum didn’t in any other case stand out amongst its residential environment. Everyone knows Freud was much more involved with interiority, so I waited to go full judgement.
Self-interest, particularly in a single’s personal childhood—precisely like the sort I’ve simply demonstrated—isn’t a brand new crux, however our want to categorise ourselves (and others) by latent which means is swelling. Possibly it is a consequence of pop-psych-speak, which is only a watered-down, widespread Freudianism. In his guide Genius, Harold Bloom calls this phenomenon Freud’s “mythology of the thoughts surviv[ing] his supposed science.” Although his scientific legitimacy has been rebuked, Freud’s validity, I’d argue, has elevated for the self-involved plenty: His ideas are foundational for parent-child attachment theories, or the “intimacy points” of the mode (do these come from an ex? a mother or father? a mixture?). It is smart why he’s culturally widespread at a time of prolific siloing through zodiac, introvert/extrovert divides, Myers-Briggs, or strawberry/tomato—and in case you stretch it far sufficient, which individuals typically do, you possibly can apply the thought of “the unconscious” to any aesthetic, conduct, or alternative in your life. Like, typically I see a house tour and I believe, What does this inside say about its inhabitant’s psyche?
It might shock you that Freud was additionally enthusiastic about structure as a thought experiment. When he wished to outline the self-limitation of his personal theories, Freud himself used the home as a metaphor. It went one thing like: If the outside of a home is a human physique, the inside is one’s thoughts. The attic turns into the superego, after which previous the acutely aware ego of the eating room you’d stumble down into the unconscious basement.
Right now, two Freud Museums exist: one home in Hampstead, one in Vienna. I used to be visiting the extra commercialized former one with my buddy, who had booked our tickets after touring the Austrian museum earlier that 12 months. There, she had been ushered via the utterly empty rooms by a information who described, apparently with narrative aptitude, all of the issues that was there. As a result of Nazi occupation in Vienna, Sigmund Freud was pressured to flee in 1938, after 78 years of residence in Austria. His residence was catalogued and replicated in London for the final 12 months of his life.
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Did this info make Freud’s London home really feel a bit much less genuine? I puzzled. The principle entrance affirmed this hesitation because it led us straight into a present store. Consider all of the Freudian puns possible, then market them: Freudian slip-pers, iceberg fridge magnets, Persian rug tea towels. The reward store sums up his present legacy—nestling into pop-culture is, inevitably, a transfer towards the business. I purchased a keychain and understood that analyzing the home itself could also be a troublesome job.
