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Street Philosopher

Daydreaming In Prague

Seán Moran rambles purposefully about the streets of the Czech city.

We can only guess at the lurid thoughts pulsating through her mind; and the dog’s owner is just as mysterious. My photograph taken on a Prague street gives no reliable access to the thoughts of the two walkers. In fact, we don’t always know what we ourselves think, let alone another human being. As Sigmund Freud puts it, a person “is not even master in his own house, but… must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind” (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, 1920). Incidentally, Freud is honoured by a strange statue in Prague, it being the sort of city where you just don’t know what lies around the next corner (or in Freud’s case, hangs by one hand from a long pole over the street).

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