Who is the real Sigmund Freud?

Believe what you want to about his theories, but when you consider what he was doing in his time, he must have been quite the revolutionary. Freud's theories did spawn several advances in the field of psychoanalysis.

To find out more about the man behind the now bizarre theories of psychoanalysis, you must visit the Freud Museum in Vienna - the place where it all began for a young Czech man running away from Nazi German occupation. The building on Berggasse is fairly nondescript and left almost the way it was when Freud first moved in in 1891. He went on to live in this house for 47 years, during which time he developed many of his theories on psychoanalysis.
Believe what you want to about his theories, but when you consider what he was doing in his time, he must have been quite the revolutionary. Freud's theories did spawn several advances in the field of psychoanalysis.
His waiting room, an exhibit in the museum, is filled with artefacts - he was an avid collector of bizarre statuettes and antiques from various cultures - and paintings that he used to gauge his clients. Walk through the door that was probably used by hundreds of patients before and explore some of Freud's belongings, like his travelling case and cigar cases.
Freud was an avid smoker, something he enjoyed more than anything else on most days. He was also very camera shy, as stated by his daughter Anna Freud, who now looks after this museum. There is a beautiful old black and white video narrated by Anna in one of the rooms that goes through some of Freud's final years - fleeing Vienna to London, getting gifts from his children and grandchildren on his birthday, and his penchant of making funny faces when he was photographed.
But the room you will want to stop at is the one that adjoins the waiting room. Filled with pictures of Freud from his childhood home in Príbor in now Czech Republic to his last days in the house on Berggasse. Some of his early recordings and papers are on display and give you more insights into the man than any postmodern psychoanalyst would be able to give you. 
The museum also houses a majority of his writings, an exhibition on the influence of psychoanalysis on art and society, including an extensive display on the rise of feminism, and Europe's largest psychoanalytic research library.
Freud Museum
Where: Berggasse 19, 1090 Wien, Austria
Hours: 10am-6pm daily
Entrance: ?10
rohit@khaleejtimes.com

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