The Sigmund Freud Museum Draws Attention to Mental Health - The New York Times

LONDON — It whitethorn good beryllium the astir celebrated sofa successful quality history.

The divan connected which Sigmund Freud received immoderate 500 patients sits successful the London location wherever helium spent the past twelvemonth of his beingness aft his flight from Nazi-occupied Vienna. It’s shaped similar a chaise longue, with a Persian rug laid implicit it. Freud would beryllium successful a seat beside it to debar oculus interaction with his patient, surrounded by books, antique vessels and statuettes.

That storied portion of furnishings is the centerpiece of the Freud Museum since it opened successful 1986 wrong a ample ceramic location successful the leafy northbound London country of Hampstead. The location and its contents were meticulously preserved by Freud’s girl Anna, a pioneer of kid psychoanalysis who lived and worked determination until her decease successful 1982. Shortly before, she sold the onshore and gathering to a foundation with the stipulation that a depository beryllium established successful her father’s name.

“When radical participate the museum, it’s the sofa that they privation to see: It’s astir similar a ineffable secular relic,” said Giuseppe Albano, the museum’s manager since July, who antecedently ran the last location of the writer John Keats successful Rome.

Mr. Albano explained that the depository was particularly applicable today. People everyplace person been progressively acrophobic astir their intelligence health, peculiarly successful the aftermath of the pandemic, and Freud was a cardinal fig successful the improvement of therapy and psychoanalysis. The depository is looking to physique up its connections with planetary audiences by processing integer tools specified arsenic virtual reality, augmented world and immersive videos, and moving with the Institute for Digital Archaeology (based successful Oxford, England), volition nutrient upcoming events for it.

When Freud archetypal moved into the location with his household successful September 1938, helium was blessed with it. Besides being “very beautiful,” helium wrote, it was “light, comfortable, spacious.” There, helium enjoyed pleasant moments with his family, some indoors and successful the garden, and met specified luminaries arsenic Salvador Dalí and Virginia Woolf, who published his books successful English.

Yet the location besides tells the heartbreaking communicative of Freud’s flight from the Nazis, of his displacement, and of his agonizing conflict with cancer.

The sojourn starts successful the eating room, which is dominated by the well-known representation of Freud successful a three-piece suit, cigar successful hand. On different partition are 4 smaller black-and-white photographs that amusement Freud’s flat astatine Berggasse 19 successful Vienna successful September 1938, 3 months aft helium and his household fled to Britain. The pictures were taken by a young lensman named Edmund Engelman who had the unsafe ngo of capturing those past views of the apartment.

One of the images shows a banner emblazoned with a swastika hanging implicit the exterior entranceway to the building. Others amusement the interior of the Freud apartment: the celebrated rug-draped couch, covered with blankets and a pillow, and shelves, vitrines and commodes crammed with books and antiquities.

A show adjacent doorway recalls the Freuds’ melodramatic flight from Vienna. There is simply a taxation certificate detailing the magnitude they paid to unafraid support to leave; a missive from the British Home Office authorizing Freud to signifier psychoanalysis successful London; and photographs of the travel from Vienna to Paris to London connected the Orient Express.

“The feeling of triumph connected being liberated is excessively powerfully mixed with sorrow,” Freud wrote successful a missive instantly aft departure, “for successful spite of everything I inactive greatly loved the situation from which I person been released.”

Nearby show cases papers the past twelvemonth of Freud’s life. Alongside his trademark circular eyeglasses, his wedding ring, and his overcoat are poignant objects linked to his illness.

A lifelong smoker, Freud was diagnosed with crab successful 1923 and underwent 33 achy operations. He subsequently wore a prosthetic jaw that is present connected salient display, adjacent to the woody apparel pins that helium utilized to support his rima open. The symptom became truthful excruciating that Freud died, close determination successful his study, of assisted suicide: a morphine injection ended his beingness — 3 weeks earlier the outbreak of World War II.

Freud had galore descendants. The astir salient among them was the creator Lucian Freud, who was calved 100 years agone this year, and died successful 2011. To people the centenary, an accumulation has been staged astatine the Freud Museum by the writer and professional Martin Gayford (who sat for Freud, has written extensively astir him, and conscionable co-edited a publication of his letters titled “Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939-1954”). The accumulation is each astir Lucian Freud’s narration with his family.

Only 16 erstwhile his gramps died, Lucian Freud was “very fond” of him, Mr. Gayford said, adjacent though “he didn’t work his work.”

In the accumulation catalog, Mr. Gayford quotes the creator arsenic saying that his gramps “always seemed to beryllium successful a bully mood. He had what galore radical who are truly intelligent have, which is not being superior oregon solemn, arsenic if they are truthful definite they cognize what they are talking astir that they don’t person the request to beryllium earnest astir it.”

When it came clip to enactment connected the accumulation (programmed by the museum’s erstwhile manager Carol Seigel), the question came up “whether you enactment works successful Sigmund’s study, which is truly the large acceptable portion there,” Mr. Gayford recalled. In the end, 2 works were hung successful the study, and the remainder of the accumulation — self-portraits of Lucian Freud arsenic good arsenic paintings, drawings and photographs — is held upstairs.

Mr. Albano said the depository was keen to gully attraction to Freud’s archetypal texts, due to the fact that determination was a information different that, arsenic successful the lawsuit of Karl Marx, the archetypal writings would beryllium interpreted and reinterpreted, and his connection would get mislaid successful translation.

With that successful mind, helium noted, the depository planned to commemorate adjacent year’s centenary of the work of “The Ego and the Id,” 1 of Freud’s astir important works.

“We would similar the Freud Museum truly to beryllium astatine the vanguard of a renaissance successful involvement successful Freud’s work,” Mr. Albano said.