Between Freud and a Naked Woman by Bruno Bosteels

Calling me a genius is the latest way people have of starting their criticism of me. First they call me a genius and then they proceed to reject all my views. - Sigmund Freud in Fragments of an Analysis with Freud

We can reflect on this final question by returning to the uses and disadvantages of the syncopated temporalities in Feliz nuevo siglo doktor Freud. Berman's bold juxtaposition of Dora, Lou, and Gloria in the fictive present at the turn of the century in fact should not mislead us into believing that their ideas and options are equally available at all times. On the contrary, the play repeatedly affirms the incommensurability of different historical periods, each of which is strictly correlated to a system of beliefs, values, and biases that are said to constitute its so-called culture. Ironically, the collapsing of different temporalities into a single present thus ultimately strengthens the divide between them, rather than upsetting it in the way that psychoanalysis certainly upset bourgeois morality in fin-de-siècle Vienna.