Images of Freud

Not many cultural critics or other academic figures become so well known in the general public that one can argue that their physical image (whether based on photographs, films, portraits and caricatures) has become iconic, along with a wide-spread dissemination of their intellectual ideas. This however is undoubtedly the case with the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose image is still immediately recognizable to a majority of the population of at least Europe and North America. Freud’s ideas (albeit in popularized form) also travel with ease in current public discourses, ranging from cartoons, jokes and other forms of comedy to serious essays, fictions and films; a phenomenon which reflects the extent to which ‘Freudian’ ideas are incorporated in the dominant Western middle-class culture of the early 21st century.