Things were just the same in the city of Vienna back in the early 20th century. The patients suffering from anxiety disorders, frustration and obsessional neuroses on their way to Freud's practise in Berggasse 19 proceeded willy-nilly past the Kornmehl butcher's in the shop window, in which there was the seductive sight of fine spiced meats, cutlets, meat jelly and sirloins. Most of them would pause for a moment and (subconsciously) decide whether they would have ham and beans or a round of beef for lunch. It may indeed have been true that the plump citizens of Vienna were tormented by sexual suppression, but the fear of putting on weight and the guilt that follows a bout of gluttony were unknown to them. The Vienna of the time fattened itself up without any anxiety in the tightening cloak of the Monarchy: meat jellies, quivering, steaming dumplings, roasted livers and splendid sour cream strudel came under the categories of life's purest pleasures.

The concept of a guilty conscience was invented by Freud's adherents. It is today's medical scientists who have declared war against greasy, crispy, bony meats and mouth-watering salt, sugar and sweet cream. It is them who advocate that everything that is good is harmful or fattening. They declare that we should eat the same kind of food as a horse; vegetables, wholemeal wheat: a balanced diet. But the result of balanced diets is an imbalanced soul! Suppression causes anxiety (or the other way around: you can never know for sure in psychoanalysis), and this leads to bulimia, obesity, anorexia nervosa, allergies, food phobias and a whole series of paranoias that cause cancer. First they tried to get rid of the heavenly state of sexuality and now they want to steal culinary delights.

This is why Sigmund Freud's cookbook, which has finally been published in Hungarian, is a milestone. In his advanced years (in fact 46 years after his death) the master was shocked to realise that in his interpretation of dreams and psychoanalysis he had misdiagnosed numerous symptoms. Some cases of oral desire were not the symptom of sexual suppression but simply hunger. The patients did not have arrhythmia, it was merely their stomachs grumbling. It was only now that Freud understood that "behind the mask of sexuality the main ingredient of every hysteria was an eating problem". He had studied the female soul in vain for thirty years but the answer to his famous question could only be found through his cook book: "What does a woman want? She wants lunch! A good dinner! A fine wine menu!"

With this collection of recipes "psychoanalysis has at last come home to the kitchen". Freud recognised that his oeuvre was lop-sided, because what we need is not "food for thought, but thought for food". So he collected Freudian recipes in his cook book, such as Caesar salad Á la Lombroso (an Italian anthropologist); omelette á la Wagner-Jauregg (an Austrian neurologist); lamb spare ribs á la Charcot (a French neurologist), which needs to be hypnotised before being cooked; and wild ass curry á la Groddeck (a German physician), which is nothing more than roast potatoes made with orange juice, wild honey, salt and pepper.

Freud's cook book offers endless possibilities. If we wish to act out our sadistic tendencies we should make Ferenczi-crunches or dream-milk-press. The former is an aubergine dish named after Freud's friend, Sándor Ferenczi, while the latter is a kind of custard. Both recipes allow us to beat the egg yolk as long as we wish. Freud devotes a special study to the origins of sadomasochist disorders in his chapter "Beating an egg", (which should read: "Beating a child".) If we want to boost our libidos we should make fettuccine (al dente of course), and if we are curious about the workings of the subconscious, the recommended recipe is a course called subconscious currents. There is no need to be afraid of the names of these dishes, in the kitchen of the father of psychoanalysis the "zone dish", or warm snack, is named erogenous zone scone, the apple pie becomes Oedipus pie, while Freudian slips are served in Madeira sauce and crown roast of lamb with megalomania.

However, nobody should be alarmed that Freud never actually wrote any such cook book. Though in his letters he mentioned fifty dishes in his oeuvre, and whimsically insisted on four-course lunches in his house in Vienna, which every member of the family had to participate in, he never published a real recipe. These were just invented by the psychologist James Hillman and the writer (and classical philologist) Charles Boer, who artfully take credit for the book as editors, although in reality they wrote the whole book, armed with a perfect knowledge of Freud's oeuvre and life.

Freud's own cook book is thus a posthumous joke. Persiflage, a pamphlet, a parody, a work of gastro- and cultural history, a cookbook and a piece of educational history, and a critique of all of these. It's up to us what we make of these recipes. If we read them as a parody of psychoanalysis (disguised as a collection of recipes), we can have a good laugh at Freud's contemporaries. If we want to actually cook any of the recipes, a little caution is called for, since some of the dishes cannot be prepared, while others would be inedible. Of course this can be helped if we carefully study the notes. The whole book is a bit like a Jewish joke: A guest asks for a bottle of Kadarka in Grün's pub. Grün brings the bottle but in the meantime the guest has changed his mind: "Bring me a Burgundy instead," he says. Grün carries out the order without a word, but the guest has changed his mind again: "Swap it for a bottle of Kékfrankos!" Grün goes back to the wine cellar and exclaims: "This is the third label I've had to stick on this bottle...