By Mr Hegarty, Head of Psychology

On a blustery late November afternoon, the Year 12 and 13 Psychology students journeyed across town to visit the Freud Museum in South Hampstead. The museum is located in the house that Sigmund Freud lived in with his family during the last year of his life (and where his daughter Anne continued to live until her death in 1982).

The students were given the opportunity to explore Freud’s former residence. The ground floor houses Freud’s study (with his iconic psychoanalytic couch), library, hall and the dining room. Upstairs are Anna Freud’s room, the lecture room and a new room housing a replica of the famous couch on which the students were able to sit. This replica couch will soon be making an appearance on the Big Screen in a film called ‘Freud’s Last Session’, which stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is the story of a fictional meeting between Freud and C.S. Lewis.

The focal point of the visit was a talk centred around Freud’s famous case study, ‘Little Hans.’ The talk, led by a knowledgeable and amusing speaker Stefan, unveiled the layers of ‘Little Hans,’ a five-year-old boy whose fears, phobias and fantasies were meticulously analysed by Freud in the early 20th century. At the end of the presentation the students were able to ask questions about the case study and more broadly about Freud and his influence on Psychology and the world more broadly.