Tourist attractions in Vienna : Sigmund Freud Museum

In the former living quarters and office of Sigmund Freud in the house at Berggasse 19 in Vienna's ninth district, the Sigmund Freud Museum presents an exhibition documenting the life and work of the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud lived and worked in this house from 1891 until 1938, when on 4 June he was forced by the National Socialists to flee with his family into exile in England.

Photo by dugspr — Home for Good

The museum was opened in 1971 by the Sigmund Freud Society in the presence of Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter. Original furnishings, including the waiting room, a selection from Freud’s collection of antiquities, and signed copies and first editions of his works provide a glimpse into Freud's biography, his cultural environment and the development of psychoanalysis. Unique film material showing the Freud family in the 1930’s, is shown in a video room with a commentary by Anna Freud. In 1996 the building was expanded with new rooms for special exhibitions and events. The addition of a new library was followed by a museum shop, a book storage unit and a modern lecture and exhibition hall in the newly integrated private apartment of the Freud family.

Photo by Emmanuel Dyan

Photo by Debraj

Photo by tomazstolfa

Photo by tomazstolfa

However his famous couch is now in the Freud Museum in London, along with most of the original furnishings, as Freud was able to take his furniture with him when he emigrated. A third Freud Museum, after London and Vienna, was started in the Czech town of Příbor in 2006 when the house of his birth was opened to the public. The museum contains an archive of images containing around two thousand documents, mostly photographs, but also paintings, drawings, and sculptures. It also consists of almost all of the existing photos of Sigmund Freud and his family, a large number of photos of Anna Freud and photos from psychoanalytic congresses etc.

Biography
Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential - and controversial - minds of the 20th century. Sigismund (later changed to Sigmund) Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic). His father was a merchant. The family moved to Leipzig and then settled in Vienna, where Freud was educated. Freud's family were Jewish but he was himself non-practicing. In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specializing in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.

Photo by Debraj

Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analyzed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences. In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.

Photo by Francisco Antunes

Photo by Joaquim Rendeiro

After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'. In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna. Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939. 
Since 1970 the annual Sigmund Freud Lecture has taken place in Vienna on Freud's birthday, 6 May. This event, at which psychoanalysts speak on a contemporary theme, was established by the Sigmund Freud Society and is now organized by the Foundation.


Text Sources:
freud-museum.at
bbc.co.uk
wikipedia.org