Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens Hampstead London NW3 5SX
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, did all of his work in Vienna, living and practising there for 47 years until 1938, after the Nazis had publicly burnt his works and had begun directly harassing his family and home. It was only US intervention that secured him passage out of the country, and he came to England in June, renting a house in Elsworthy Road, before moving a few blocks to this comfortable but modest three-storey house, where, with his wife Martha, sister-in-law Minna Bernays and daughter Anna Freud, he set about recreating the environment of the Berggasse apartment. Comparing photos, the library and consulting room-study are almost perfect: the patient’s couch, with his own square armchair hidden from their view to the side; his desk and display cases, overflowing with his huge collection of objects from ancient Egypt and Greece (buried objects that have been uncovered, as he observed); his library of art, literature, medicine and psychology, and above all archeology. All of this makes for a compelling visit: two rooms that shaped history, albeit transplanted from Vienna and little used in this location – Freud died on September 23 1939, three weeks after Britain and France had declared war on Germany. Upstairs, there are further mementoes of Freud, a small collection relating to Anna Freud, who continued to live and practise here after her father’s death, and an excellent video of the flat at Berggasse. There is a witty bookshop and giftshop, too.
