Gambling Till You Drop

Which settee is considered Britain’s best known? Where could you encounter it? Check in the famed Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead. The Museum sits where Sigmund Freud made his home — where he would set up the prominent consulting rooms and chaise longue — after leaving Austria just before Nazi occupation — the Anschluss — in 1938. Kept as it was is Freud’s office, precisely as he left it following all that time handling patients, and resting there is England’s foremost settee, cradle of many complexes, punchline to myriad satires and one-liners. Like the father of psychiatry, the planet’s most famous recliner didn’t start its life in Britain. It found itself heading toward immortality in Austria, while in use at Berggasse 19 in Vienna. This is the address of Freud’s house during the time he began researching and devising his famous concepts of psychiatry.

The lounger itself — festooned with covers and seeming casual, inviting and cozy — is deservedly famous, considering its vital place through Freud’s work. But much less well publicized is the preservation of his own chair. This chair is where he carefully placed himself, no distraction to his patients on the lounger, during their “free association”.

Effectively, psychotherapy, settees and all the other concepts frequently associated with techniques have become a deep font of humor for writers, comedians etc. ever since, and none have been more active on this front than Woody Allen, an observer, a patient and a student of psychiatrists — aka shrinks — for around four decades.

“My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst”

“Donnie, your analyst? I call mine Dr. Chomsky, you know? Either that or he hits me with a ruler.”

“We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women.”

Many others look for wisdom in the classic analyst’s sofa. Fictional psychiatrist Niles Crane showcases the lighter side of his vocation: “Although I feel perfectly qualified to fill Frasier’s radio shoes, I should warn you that while Frasier is a Freudian, I am a Jungian. So there’ll be no blaming Mother today!” It isn’t just counselors who give rise to wit touching on the couch. I give you a political observation: “Senator Hillary Clinton is attacking President Bush for breaking his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions, saying a promise made, a promise broken. And then out of habit, she demanded that Bush spend the night on the couch.”