Lie Down and Tell Me All About Your Father


Entering Sigmund Freud's lovely house in Highgate this morning was a great moment for me. He made one of the greatest discoveries in human history; and in so doing he enabled changes to occur in art, life and culture. As an artist who regularly uses a stream of consciousness approach in order to discover and unlock hidden imagery in my work, I bow down before his brilliance. He had fled to London from Nazi persecution, doubly endangered, as both an intellectual and a Jew. The Nazis had already burnt all of his books and had interrogated his daughter, Anna.  London proved a haven of peace during this tumultuous time. What a beautiful house it is! Stepping into his study/consulting room, complete with all of his furniture and archeological artifacts, shipped over from his house in Austria, was a really moving experience. There was the actual couch where his patients lay to unburden themselves of their neuroses - the Wolf Man; the Rat Man etc. - probably one of the most famous pieces of furniture in history. It was the central ingredient in the discovery and development of psychoanalysis. On a wall was the Museum's reminder that Sigmund considered all religions to be manifestations of the 'great neurosis of humanity'; I gave a silent nod in agreement. Upstairs, there were his home movies playing in an empty white room. One featured Sigmund in the back garden with his teenage grandsons, Stephen and Lucian; and there was his little dog, 'Lun'. Sigmund's cheek was clearly seen to be bruised and blackened from the cancer of the jaw which he had battled for fifteen years, and which finally killed him.

Sigmund Freud's House and Museum in Highgate.

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