Before Sigmund Freud left Austria in 1938, he was required to sign a document asserting that he had been treated by the authorities, especially the Gestapo, “with all the respect and consideration due to my scientific reputation, that I could live and work in full freedom”. He signed, adding, “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.” The sarcasm was, fortunately, lost on the assembled thugs.

This meeting of one of the most brilliant men of our age and a few 20th-century goons is unusual because, generally, the goons win and the aberrant intellectual is simply silenced with a bullet, piano wire or a head-crushing boot. But, then, Freud is nothing if not unusual.

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