William Cook has written an interesting background exploration of Freud cut to the chaise with details on the wherefores and whereofs and just plain why of Freud’s use of a reclinging position for his patients in an era when such a position was considered highly inappropriate and very much risque to the point of being taboo. The reasons lie in the hypnotic origins of psychoanalysis . . . Cook ostensibly puts Freud’s couch on the couch so to speak . . .

WHY DID SIGMUND Freud make his patients lie on couches? Why didn’t he tell them to sit up straight, or psychoanalyse them standing up? The solution to this mystery has been found and is on display in a fascinating exhibition in Freud’s old apartment in Vienna, part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of his birth. . . . . . . In Freud’s day, reclining in mixed company was an extremely risque business. “If a visitor is announced, you are to receive him in a standing position – never lying on the chaise longue,” warned Konstanze von Franken in her Handbook of Good Form & Fine Manners, published in Berlin in 1922. . . . . . . Even sitting upright on a couch, rather than a straight-backed chair, was seen as far too forward. “A gentleman never takes a seat on the sofa,” declared Herr Schramm in his book of etiquette, Good Form & Proper Deportment (Berlin, 1919). . . . . . . In light of such stern advice, Freud’s invitation to his patients to lounge about seems remarkably daring – rather like a modern analyst inviting his patients to strip off and clamber into bed. So why did Freud risk opprobrium by asking those who visited him to adopt such a provocative position? . . . . . . . The answer lies in the extraordinary things that happen when people do their thinking (and talking) lying down. . . . . . . As an enthusiastic practitioner of hypnosis, Freud had seen how lying down liberated people from conventional trains of thought. Although he abandoned hypnotism soon after he moved into his apartment in Vienna’s Berggasse, he retained a hypnotist’s couch to assist him in his new technique of free association. Freud found that lying down promotes a loss of control that encourages more instinctive conversation. And no wonder – the word couch (from the French coucher) doesn’t only mean to lie down; it also means to put an idea into words.

See the original article for more.

All the best,
Brian