Rewind:  January 20, 2025 – “Famous Visitors to the Area – Sigmund Freud”

We recently came across an article from the August 31, 1962 issue of Lake George Mirror which states that Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychoanalysis, visited the Adirondacks in 1909.

Freud made the trip to America to attend an international congress that was being held at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  The letter was written to his family describing where he was visiting while in America.  He visited Niagara Falls and spent several days at a camp in Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, along with Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and Hungarian psychoanalyst S. Ferenczi.  That certainly must have been a true “Meeting of the Minds.”  It is believed that Freud returned to New York via Lake George and the Hudson River.

The lengthy letter was written on September 16, 1909, and describes Freud’s fascination at American wilderness life and camp customs.  In it he says, “Of everything I have seen in America this here is probably the strangest:  a camp, you must imagine, in a wilderness in the woods, situated on a mountain meadow… “

He continues by commenting on the “curious custom of giving cabins names and on the “rusticity of (the) surroundings.  Everything is rough and natural in character, seems artificial, but it comes off somehow.”

The letter, handwritten in ink on both sides of a single sheet of paper bearing Freud’s Vienna address, goes on to mention Adirondack wildlife, including squirrels, porcupine, and black bear.

Freud’s letter was donated to the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, now ‘Adirondack Experience.’  It was presented to the Museum by Freud’s son, Ernst L. Freud of London, along with a translation, as it was written in German.

Who were some of the other famous people who visited the area?  Let us know so we can feature them in a Rewind post.  You will need to prove your source of the information.  You can leave a reply at the bottom of this column or email us at:  [email protected].  Thank you.