Our Story

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The Freud Foundation U.S. supports financially and collaborates intellectually with the Sigmund Freud Museum at Berggasse 19. To illustrate, the Freud Foundation U.S. and the museum organizes webinars to discuss the work of Ukrainian psychotherapists with patients traumatized by the war in Ukraine. These discussions, called Psychoanalysis under Conditions of War are attended by world-renowned trauma experts as well as a worldwide audience including over 200 Ukrainians, many of them therapists.

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Additionally, the Freud Foundation U.S., in cooperation with the museum and the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, set up a series of online conversations under the title Refugees and Immigrants: Their Experience and Contribution to Psychoanalysis in North America in conjunction with an exhibition in Stockbridge based on the Sigmund Freud Museum's exhibition "Organized Escape - Survival in Exile". In 2023, this presentation focused on the experience and influence of refugee and émigré psychoanalysts in North America.

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Since 1971, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna has displayed Sigmund and Anna Freud’s practice rooms as well as the family’s private rooms. The museum houses four permanent exhibitions: the development of psychoanalysis; the Freud family life; the history of the house, and a conceptual art collection. And yet, Berggasse 19 is not only a site of memory. It is also a site of loss. For Freud, psychoanalysis, and the liberal, humanistic, cosmopolitan spirit that animated both were driven out of Central Europe by National Socialism. In keeping with that memory and response to that loss, Berggasse 19 today is a thriving place of discussion and education. With its event and exhibition programs, the museum seeks to bring Freud’s ideas, approach, and spirit of inquiry to bear on the critical challenges we face in the world today.

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In 2025, the annual theme “Being Human" is made visible in several programmes and exhibitions. The programs rely – also conveying a critical perspective – on Freud’s thought and his way of addressing issues in daily life as well as his  personal experiences.

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The museum’s approach appears to coincide with issues of concern to young people: About 25-30 percent of visitors to Berggasse 19 are young adults. Perhaps young people, searching for answers, can find in psychoanalysis a set of tools to help answer their questions.  The Sigmund Freud Museum shows how Freud’s ideas can help us to understand our world today.

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We urge you to support this important work by becoming a Friend of the Freud Foundation and by making a financial contribution to the museum through to the Freud Foundation U.S.  As a 501(c)3 organization, any contribution to the Foundation is tax-deductible in the United States to the full extent of the law.

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Board of Directors

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Chairman: Dominic Freud
President: Thomas Kohut
Vice-Presidents: Petra Vospernik, Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, Marjorie Federbush
Treasurer: Stephen Harnik
Secretary: Peter Noemaier
Directors: Eric Bettelheim, Pamela Cooper-White, Franz Jurkowitsch, Lisa Raskin, Michael S. Roth