Aby Warburg was the scion of a prominent Hamburg banking house who became a distinguished European cultural and art historian. He researched the vestiges of pagan antiquity in Renaissance and Reformation art, explored the secret rituals of the Hopis in Arizona, and acutely perceived the savage anti-Semitism in German and European culture. He developed a paranoid psychosis, and was treated by Freud and Bleuler's pupil Ludwig Binswanger in his Kreuzlingen sanatorium, where we can see his existential and relational treatment at work. Warburg was released after he could present a coherent account of the Hopi ‘serpent ritual’ in a public lecture. The brutal pagan underside of European culture was not only in the high cultural artefacts he studied; it was also inside Warburg. This paper explores the interweaving of inner life with creative work and the relationships between Warburg, Binswanger and Freud.