When You Say One Thing and You Mean Your Mother

Yesterday I went to the Freud Museum (I am with the Counseling Masters group after all) which is just a little ways out from the city center at Berggasse 19. I didn't quite know what to expect, but Vienna has some pretty good museums so I suppose I had higher expectations than I ought to have had. The entrance was promising,

and when we got inside they had big folders filled with information about what you were looking at around the museum. Except they didn't have enough for everyone (granted, we were a group of eighteen). You started out in a rather sparse 'library', although there was a reading area and you could actually pull the books off the shelves and browse through them if you so desired. From there you passed into a room with a silent film from around 1900, The Dream of a Racetrack Fiend,  playing and a bit of information about the ties between dreaming in cinema and Freud's interest in dreaming on the wall. Moving on, you came into a room with this couch:

Not THE couch, mind you, but an artistic rendition of a couch (I certainly wouldn't want to rest on that). Also pictures of Andy Warhol lounging, on a couch, in his warehouse were on the wall. In the next room there was a sort of tribute to Sigmund's daughter, Anna, and her work as the co-founder of child psychology. You could then backtrack a little to go through what used to be Freud's entrance hall, complete with travelling trunk. Then you got to the real heart of the museum as you passed into Freud's old waiting room which maintained the same look that it had almost a hundred years ago.

Through the next doorway you come into a set of rooms brimming with Freudian history and information.

This is where those folders really come in handy as there is a number tag next to everything so you can reference it and get a paragraph or two of information for every picture or object, including his early belief in the curing effects of cocaine.

As you go into the second of these rooms you realize that you've come to the end of your tour and start to feel a bit antsy, as though somehow you missed something and you can't quite put your finger on what it is. Unsettled, you retrace your path back through Freud's entrance hall where you can take a shortcut to the museum's front desk when you spot it: the elusive keystone to all of Freud's work: The Couch.

There's just one little problem. What you're looking at is a picture of a picture. Freud's couch is in fact not in the Freud Museum, but actually resides in London. I tried to convince the professor that their Freudian experience was just not complete without actually being in the presence of The Couch and that we should take a class trip up to London, but to no avail. Alack! But they also directed your course through a charming little shop with all sorts of Freudian things, like this lovely little stationary set:

Anyway, explore the Freud Museum at your own discretion, but think long and hard before spending that € 4,50 (for students) on whether or not it's worth it when you don't even get to see The Couch.