Sigmund Freud: The Time For Understanding

On September 2nd 1901 when Sigmund Freud was forty-five years old he at last found himself in Rome, something which had the highest emotional significance for him and one which he called 'the high point of my life'?[2] In a letter of October 1898 he had written to his friend Fliess, 'I am studying the topography of Rome, the yearning for which becomes ever more tormenting'[3], and four months later he spoke of a wish, which would mature, 'if only I could get to Rome'.[4] When he finally conquered his resistance of going to the Eternal City and realised his dream he tells us, 'Not only did I bribe the Trevi Fountain as everyone does.…