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Sharon Kivland

Freud on Holiday. Volume I. Freud Dreams of Rome
MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, 2026





Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise,
The Grave, the City and the Wildernes
Percy Bysshe Shelley



‘Freud dreams of Rome four times and his dreams are those of longing, until he discovers it needs only a little courage to fulfil his wish, as he adds in a footnote of 1909. In another note, sixteen years later, he appears delighted to add that after 1909 he becomes a constant pilgrim to Rome. In October 1898 he writes to Fliess of his lassitude, moderated only by his study of the topography of Rome, ‘the yearning for which becomes ever more tormenting’.

Freud Dreams of Rome was the first book in the series entitled Freud on Holiday. Its origin was a conference paper, given in ‘Dream-Writing’ in the School of English, University of Kent, in 2005, convened by Sarah Wood, int. al. The paper was accompanied by the projection of a series of photographs, showing a Rome never seen before, or at least not one that was ever consciously recognised. These are views of a city any tourist might see—but they are captured empty of human activity, as if these were night scenes in broad daylight. These empty arches and cryptic doorways indicate a concealed life.  The book that followed was first published by information as material. This new edition of a hundred, each book signed and numbered,  includes an introduction to the series Freud on Holiday.  As in the first edition, each photographic plate is tipped-in by hand. 

Elizabeth Legge’s essay  ‘Not Getting There is Half the Fun; Holidays with Freud’, was published in 2015 in the Art Journal, and may be access here.
48 pages, 11 tipped-in photographic plates 230 mm x 145 mm Paperback ISBN 978-1-7385079-7-9 £16.00



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Mark