The Freud Museum, London

I’m in awe of Freud. I have always been in awe of Freud’s theories. I was in anticipatory awe as I walked through Belsize Park and Hampstead to 20 Maresfield Gardens in London, his home for the final year of his life and, unsurprisingly, in the welcoming entrance vestibule of the 1920’s villa, this feeling persisted.
 
It didn’t just persist. It intensified. Warm, mellow November sun followed me in to the museum’s introduction, ‘Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. His legacy spans disciplines from Psychology to Literature and Art, and his ideas continue to affect the way we understand ourselves.’ The Director smiled reverently, and a spirituality seemed to exist as his work was described, together with his daughter, Anna Freud’s, pioneering practice. 
 
So, then I explored. This house has a very alert, all sensory experience permeating it. Freud’s consulting room, eminent couch, his reading chair, treasured antiquities and belongings having accompanied him following the Nazi occupation of Austria. Although frail, he practised here, French doors opening outwardly into an ample, tranquil garden in this quiet suburb. 
 
I settled finally on a chaise longue, the magnificent staircase has a large landing between flights. My awe had not subsided, the experience was reflected in the early afternoon rays of, ‘id’, ‘super-egos’ and ‘libidos.’ I glanced around from this fantastic vantage point, other visitors were filled with wonder too and I wondered about the man. Literary Critic Lionel Trilling had noted, ‘his personal life, he said, could not possibly be of the slightest concern to the world.’ Smiling, my eyes settled on Dali’s sketches of Freud, perfectly described by poet Penelope Shuttle:
 
Portrait of Sigmund Freud by Salvador Dali
(pen and ink on blotting paper)
 
Freud’s a spectrograph
caught on pale yellow paper, 
ghostly, marooned,
his darkening brow
a swarm of bees curving neatly
into the hive of his head.
Dali sketches Freud
with a draughtsman’s precision,
as head of Orpheus cast in the river
or the dreamy noggin of a shaman.
Behind little specs,
you can’t see his eyes,
but one ear is cocked wide-open,
as is natural to the good doktor of listening. 
 
Poem by kind permission of the Author, previously published in, ‘Under the Radar,’ Nine Arches Press. 
Freud Museum London https://www.freud.org.uk/