EMILY DATES... HER BROTHER

For fuck's sake! Every week my cries for a hot young man are scoffed at, and this week takes the biscuit (I secretly think my editor fancies me so doesn’t want me to find Mr Right). So anyway, as this is the Family issue it was decided that a trip to the Freud Museum would work a treat... with my brother (my dad was busy). DP still demanded that Oli (DP's photographer) took some suggestively posed photos of me with my sibling.

I hadn’t been to the museum for a while, but used to go when my Grandfather was alive and gave talks there. He escaped from Vienna with my great great grandfather Sigmund in 1938 and it was the house Sigmund died in a year later. It was turned into a museum in 1982 when his daughter Anna died and still contains his possessions and memorabilia famously attached to the Freud ancestry like the couch his patients lay on.

The museum holds Freud’s collection of antiques and artefacts, which are carefully contained in glass cabinets around the house (Oli the photographer almost knocked one over – I can’t take him anywhere).  The exhibition discusses Freud’s dream theories, his infamous phallic imagery theory and Oedipus complex.

My brother Andrew and I had a wander around and had a chat about what it means to us to have such a notorious heritage and this is what we came up with:

 

Emily:

I love the delight it gives my friends to laugh at me, point and shout, “Another Freudian slip” when I fall over drunk.

People automatically assume I have a high libido.

Sigmund experimented with enough cocaine to kill a horse… people wonder where I get my addictive personality from.

Everyone presumes I’m far more intelligent than I really am.

There are not many people that can say they can buy a finger puppet in the shape of their great great Grandfather.

Museum Curator - Michael Molnar

Andrew:

My Granddad always said being Sigmund’s grandson was fame enough for him, and I would say being Emily Freud’s brother is fame enough too.

When I pick up the phone and the caller mispronounces my surname I know two things - firstly, they’re trying to sell me something and and secondly they’re a complete imbecile.

I can trace my ancestry back ten generations by just opening a book or googling my family tree on the internet.

The annual family reunion is always an eye-opener.

People automatically assume I fancy my mother.

Oh, and if you were expecting any saucy snaps of me with my bro, then you're a bad person. Incest is terribly awkward.

The Freud Museum is situated on Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead and is open Wednesday to Sunday 12-5 pm.

There is also an online shop. I recommend the Sigmund Freud slippers.

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