Che tipo di persona era Freud? ABSTRACT: In his reevaluation of Freud, seen as a figure filled with contradictions and idiosyncracies but anyway still worthy of being discussed and studied, the author wonders about what is the meaning one should give to the rethinking from a contemporary perspective to the «historical» thinkers; his conclusion is that such a rethinking can be meaningful only if it's based as precisely as possible upon a scrupolous reconstruction of the context which the thinker in question was living in.