Which recliner ought to be England’s best known? Have you any idea where it is?
Check in the Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead. The Museum is located in Freud’s London dwelling place (and set up the reputable consulting rooms and couch), after fleeing the German annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) in the late thirties. Kept as it was is the great man’s study, exactly as it was in his era, and resting there is his sofa, source of numerous complexes, maligned in a multitude of satires and skits.
The couch itself was not built in Britain, however. It had set out inching closer to immortality in Austria. As you perhaps know, this is the address of Freud’s household while he was to develop his pioneering psychological hypotheses. The sofa itself (comfy, cozy and comfortable) is understandably well-known, due to its necessary part during his work. Sadly, this tends to overshadow the fact that the father of psychiatry’s armchair resides in the study. This easy chair was where he observed from, out of view from the occupants of the couch, during their “free association”.
Analysis, free association, settees and everything else generally related to approaches present a deep supply of jokes for comics, cartoonists and others from the beginning, and maybe the most active of them in this area is Woody Allen, someone thoroughly au fait with psychiatrists – A.K.A. shrinks – for around 40 years. “And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.” “I have an interesting case. I’m treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities. I’m getting paid by eight people.” Mary Wilke: Don’t psychoanalyze me. I have a doctor for that. Isaac Davis: Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor? I mean, you don’t get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone? Mary Wilke: Alright, so he’s unorthodox. He’s a highly qualified doctor. Isaac Davis: He done a great job on you, you know? Your self-esteem is a notch below Kafka.
He isn’t the only person to find insight in the iconic psychoanalyst’s couch.
As an example, Marshall McLuhan offers: “If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch.” Michelle Pfeiffer says: “Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, hold our breath and hope we’ve set aside enough money for our kid’s therapy.”
