The science history and culture of Vienna: Austria

8 December 2025 – 5 days for £2,286

Discover Vienna, a city that, at the turn of the last century, was Europe’s most important cultural and academic melting pot. Gain insight into the mind of Sigmund Freud and the city in which he spent most of his life. Uncover how he explored the unconscious and became known as the founder of psychoanalysis. Learn about other key Austrian psychological thinkers, including Alfred Adler and Viktor Frankl.  

Vienna combined a wealthy civil society with a period of tolerance for the Jewish community and a flourishing scientific, artistic and musical sphere. It was in this atmosphere that Freud was able to pioneer his ideas, specifically his theory of psychoanalysis. Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Freud spent most of his childhood and adult life in Vienna. In 1923, he published "The ego and the id", which pioneered the idea that the unconscious mind is split into the id, ego and superego, each competing for control over our thoughts and actions. It was this theory that led to the foundation of modern psychoanalysis and cemented Freud as one of the world’s great scientific thinkers.

Travel in the company of Professor Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology at Brunel University London. He will join the tour throughout and offer lectures which will cover Freud, Adler, and Frankl simultaneously, within the historical context of Viennese culture during the early 20th century. The lectures will be broadly chronological (rather than thematic), starting with Freud's invention of psychoanalysis and ending with the Nazi annexation of Austria and the emigration of numerous Jewish clinicians, including Freud himself. 

Talk topics:

• Vienna 1900: Modernism, Hysteria, and the Rise of Psychoanalysis.
• Who Controls the Human Mind? Conflict and Culture in the Three Viennese Schools of Psychotherapy.
• “Declaration of No Impediment”: Antisemitism, Forced Exile, and the Global Dissemination of a Clinical Brand.

In partnership with Kirker Holidays.

DAY 1: VIENNA ARRIVAL AND ALFRED ADLER CENTER INTERNATIONAL

You will be met on arrival and transferred to your hotel. 

In the evening, there will be a welcome meeting with your tour expert, tour leader and the rest of the group.

Afterwards, you will have your first lecture, which will be on the Viennese school and will be held at the Alfred Adler Center International, located in the district where Alfred Adler was born and lived. Adler was an early associate of Sigmund Freud. His revolutionary observations triggered a life of research dedicated to understanding people, an approach he called "individual psychology". Adler’s work is fundamental to the profession and practices of the school of psychology. Theorists as diverse as Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl and Abraham Maslow credit Adler’s work as an important basis for their own contributions. The Adler centre was founded in 1973 on the Adlerian principles of social justice, individual healing, education, holism and community need.

Afterwards, there will be a welcome dinner for the group.

DAY 2: VIENNA JEWISH QUARTER

Today is devoted to exploring the Jewish history of the city. Until 1938, Vienna had one of the most significant Jewish communities in the world, numbering almost 200,000 at its peak, which included many prominent scientists and thinkers.

Begin with a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter of the city, before visiting the Jewish Museum at Palais Eskeles in Dorotheergasse, the subterranean remains of a medieval synagogue and the Holocaust Memorial at Judenplatz. Judenplatz was the center of Jewish life in Vienna during the Middle Ages and is now considered a place of remembrance.

There will be free time in the afternoon.

DAY 3: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF FREUD

This morning, begin with a walking tour following in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud’s life in Vienna.

Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Freud spent most of his childhood and adult life in Vienna. In 1873, he began studying medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital and collaborated with Josef Breuer before travelling to Paris, where he spent time as a student of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. On his return to Vienna, the ideas that he had developed in Paris were rejected by the most prominent scientists of his day, so he set up in a private practice, specialising in nervous disorders. In 1923, he published "The ego and the id", which pioneered the idea that the unconscious mind is split into the id, ego and superego, each competing for control over our thoughts and actions. It was this theory that led to the foundation of modern psychoanalysis and cemented Freud as one of the world’s great scientific thinkers.

Start at the famous Café Landtmann, a meeting point for many of the great thinkers, artists and politicians of Belle Époque Vienna and a favourite of not only Freud, but also Gustav Mahler, Peter Altenberg, Felix Salten and Emmerich Kálmán. Finish at Berggasse 19, Vienna's most famous address, the birthplace of psychoanalaysis and now the Sigmund Freud Museum. The moment you step inside, it becomes clear that this museum is no ordinary memorial site. It is a place that preserves Freud's spirit, housed in the building where he worked for 47 years.

After lunch, there will be a visit to the Viktor Frankl Museum, devoted to the psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, the third school of Viennese psychotherapy. The famous Viennese doctor and philosopher lived in the same house that now accommodates the museum from the end of the second world war until his death in 1997.

DAY 4: VIENNA OLD TOWN, INCLUDING MUSEUMS

Visit the Narrenturm (Fool's Tower), which is Europe's oldest building for the accommodation of those receiving psychiatric care. Built in 1784, it is located next to the old Vienna General Hospital site and is now home to a fascinating exhibition of pathology and anatomy.

Continue to the Josephinum Medical Museum, part of the Medical University of Vienna. As well as exhibits on the development of medical teaching, ophthalmology, hygiene, brain function, surgery and pathology, the Josephinum has the second largest collection of wax anatomical models in the world. Still protected in their original rosewood and Venetian glass displays from the late 1700s, the 1192 models of dismembered body parts and whole figures were created by wax artists in Florence, Italy, before being painstakingly transported over the Alps by pack mule.

DAY 5: VIENNA DEPARTURE

After breakfast, you will be transferred to the airport for your departure.