ABSTRACT
Freud was fascinated and irked by the city of Paris. He called Paris a "magically attractive and repulsive city." We know impressionistically from his letters that he felt secluded and estranged in the French capital, that his moods shifted between feelings of exhilaration and depression. Scientific knowledge alone seemed insufficient to bridge the cultural gap between the provincial Austrian Jew and the cosmopolitan Parisians. Like so many short-term visitors before and since, Freud judged the Parisians inaccessible and mysterious; they were cold, detached, and difficult to engage in human contact. Yet there was something about Parisian life that was theatrical and passionate. He found the Parisians irresistibly appealing, and he longed to be intimate with them. One senses that, despite his penetrating insight, Freud had trouble figuring out the French. He felt "gobbled up," eerie, weird, not quite able to fathom the intricate secrets of the city and its inhabitants. To plumb its unfathomable depths, he relied on literary works, above all, on nineteenth-century novels, such as Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. Before departing in February, 1886, he exclaimed: "What an ass I am to be leaving Paris!"2
