The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, devoted his life to studying the unconscious human mind, but in the end he much preferred the uncomplicated company of dogs, says Isabel George.

When Wolf, a huge black German Shepherd, joined the Freud household at Berggasse19, Vienna IX, he had one job — to protect Anna, the youngest of the professor’s six children, who loved taking long walks through the city’s winding streets.

Wolf was Freud’s gift to Anna, but it wasn’t long before the therapist’s curiosity fixed on the dog’s instinctive and pronounced drive to protect. In therapy terms, Freud experienced ‘transference’; he saw his own protective feelings towards his child projected onto Wolf.

But where Freud had to hold back from scaring away Anna’s unsuitable suitors, the dog happily gave them a little ‘nip’ to send them quickly on their way! Ironically, and to Freud’s amusement, this included his English biographer Ernest Jones.

As Freud observed: “Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object relations.”