This is a recording of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology.

Freud's work has had a huge impact, not just on how we talk about mental health, but

also how we treat it.

Freud helped move treatment out of the psych ward and onto the couch.

Freud spent the majority of his life and did most of his work in Austria, but in 1938

the Nazi party came to power and Freud, who was Jewish, escaped with his family.

He found his new home in London.

It's a very leafy neighborhood in North London, really big houses all around.

Freud managed to bring a lot of his books, his huge antique collection, and one very, very important piece of furniture.

This would become possibly the most famous piece of domestic furniture in the world.

If any couch can be called a celebrity, it is this one.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Alice Obscura, the celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today we're going to North London, to the Freud Museum.

If there's a couch nearby, lay back.

We are going to talk about your dreams and your relationship with your parents, just kidding.

But we will talk about the couch and the house where you can see it.

That's after this.

Sigmund Freud's parents moved their family to Vienna, Austria, when he was just four.

That's where he grew up when he went to school, and where he developed most of his notable theories.

It was in 1896 that he coined the term psychoanalysis.

And by the 1930s, he was a recognized figure all around the world.

But when the Nazi incumbent Nazi party came to Austria in 1938,

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