V.Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 1973,116 refers to Freud as the "Austrian crank with a shabby umbrella." His comment is quite puzzling.  Although the name of Sigmund Freud is sometimes brought up in connection to an "umbrella", nevertheless this umbrella appears in a demonstration by Hippolyte Bernheim, one in which Freud was merely a creative bystander (who extracted important conclusions about unconscious processes from it).* It would be interesting to trace the origin of Nabokov's "umbrella" attributions (Gradus sported a trilby and a loosely folded umbrella...), to check if his depreciation, in this instance, was an expression of his own crankiness, not to be seriously considered in connection to anything freudian.

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* - Wikipedia: Hippolyte Bernheim (1840 – 1919) was a French physician and neurologist, born at Mülhausen, Alsace. He received his education in his native town and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as doctor of medicine in 1867. The same year he became a lecturer at the university and established himself as a physician in the city.When, in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war, Strasbourg passed to Germany, Bernheim moved to Nancy...When the medical faculty took up hypnotism, about 1880, Bernheim was very enthusiastic, and soon became one of the leaders of the investigation. He became a well-known authority in this new field of medicine...Bernheim also had an influence on Sigmund Freud, who had visited Bernheim in 1889, and witnessed some of his experiments, though he was known as an antagonist of Jean-Martin Charcot (Freud was a student of Charcot).