ABSTRACT
After the Museum of Fine Arts was opened in Vienna in 1889, Freud was a frequent visitor. At the top of the grand staircase in the magnificent entrance there is a huge statue by Canova of Theseus killing a centaur. It symbolises civilisation vanquishing barbarism, though it is significant that it has to depend on the methods of barbarism to do so. At that time people could still believe in the goodness of human nature, that culture and science were spreading inevitably outward from a European centre across the world.
