His couch or rather one of his patients remained there

Sigmund Freud lived forty-seven years in the same bourgeois apartment in Vienna. After the annexation of the Austria by the Nazi Germany, foreign friends organized exile of the Jewish psychoanalyst with his furniture and his family in London. He there died on September 23, 1939. His couch or rather one of his patients remained there. He is even not returned for the exhibition on "the couch", the sofa. It stands at the 1953 to that installed since 1971 to the old address Memorial). The place is moving (one can see family films reviewed in English with a strong German accent by an old lady, Anna Freud). It crosses applied pilgrims. The exhibition is intelligent and very much supports the absence of the father of all sofas. Through catalogues and vintage photos, she explores the place of these "layers" and other "diwans" in the medical practice of the time. The doctor is longer his patient for examination, the tuberculosis or the depressive is based is the good air. The sanatorium and rest home become venue, theme of expression for architects to fashion (Joseph Hoffmann) and sets of roman ("The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann). Orientalisants sofas, Freud sees the world exposition of 1873 or 1883 on electricity. He also saw in some of his patients and patient of the gentry who sometimes still to go at the beginning of his practice. Later, it will impose the rite of the visit at his home in his cabinet.

Photos, taken just before the move, to see the layout of the premises. It extends on a sofa covered with an oriental carpet dating back along the wall. The eye is lost to the ceiling unless he is interested in one of multiple archaeological pieces collected by Freud in the cabinet or the adjoining Office. Freud, he is sitting in an armchair, head of the sofa, out of sight of the client. "I can hardly bear to be disfigured for eight hours per day... and I don't want my face expressions give the patient subject to interpretation..." "Photos showing a dozen analysts today American and Argentine firms attest that the disciples of the master took a few liberties with this provision. Freud had six children with his wife Martha and was notoriously unfaithful. However the sofa evokes other uses than psychoanalysis. At this point that savoir-faire manuals vacillate between his presence at the show or its relegation in more intimate rooms. In the "physiology of marriage", Balzac fun warned against these "Ottoman". The promenaded and lorettes away by Paul Gavarni stretch there. Proust to Toulouse-Lautrec there is is wallowing but especially to there left photograph. Bizarre.

A few time sofas are presented for real. Our favorite, one that we would be popular without hesitation in a living room, was designed by the great architect Otto Wagner. There he was commissioned in 1906 by the Director of the savings of the post headquarters, due to the same pencil, merit the visit. And it was installed in his Office. No doubt step to receive his analyst.