Sunday 4 March 2012

Too many Freuds


I'm taking a little break from Utopia today because I miss rambling on about other rubbish.

H.I. suddenly said - out of the blue - the other day, "Apparently, Freud was a real bastard - his wife would cook him a lovely meal, and he would force her to sit facing the wall as he sat at the table eating it."

I had a mental image of Clement Freud committing unspeakable acts of mental cruelty to his long-suffering wife, and it just didn't add up, so I asked her to elaborate on it. You will probably have to be English to understand how this image of Clement does not fit with his public persona. Yes, I knew he took 'Just a Minute' a little too seriously, but even so...

Then I realised that she must have been talking about Sigmund Freud, and I immediately had an image of Carl Jung mistreating his wife before the correct face attached itself to the name. I had no idea that Sigmund was such an unspeakable cad, but after a while, she said something else which made it clear that she was talking about Lucian Freud. Sometimes she thinks that I have been following her thought-processes using some type of psychic technique, but I suppose that - her being a painter - I could have worked this out by a process of elimination.

That, and the fact that there are so many Freuds knocking around (Lucian had between 14 and 40 children, according to the next thing she said) makes keeping up difficult sometimes.

6 comments:

  1. I have an anecdote. At an art exhibition opening in West Australia, a wife was bemoaning her husband's dithering.
    "But I do understand, really. My father was trained ..."

    Shit. Just realised that you are talking about Freud, not Einstein. Can I tell you this tale anyway?

    She said, "My father was trained by Einstein. He told me that Einstein walked into the lecture hall, gave his lecture and then needed an assistant to point him in the direction of the door and walked him out at the end of the lecture."

    Sorry that I've gone off-topic here, but I've always loved that story.

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    1. I always confuse that picture of Jung with Einstein as well, Sarah. As if life with the Freuds wasn't difficult enough.

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  2. Sigmund F's favourite joke. A young Prince was walking along Oxford Street when he encountered his EXACT double. He was so shocked that he asked his double 'Did, by any chance, you mother work at Buckingham Palace?'. The double replied 'Strange you should ask that, because my father once did!'.

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    1. That's a good one, has has the ring of truth about it.

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