Laurence Simmons, the former head of the Italian Department and presently in the Department of Film, Television, and Media Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, has compiled a detailed encyclopedia of Freud's many travels to and love affair with Italy. Simmons posits that Italy heightened Freud's sense of the visual, as well as his sexual arousal, and played a major role in his self-analysis. Given Freud's well-documented phobia of train travel, the amount of travel that he actually undertook is extraordinary.

Simmons records in detail every trip to Italy, the cities Freud traveled to, his traveling companions, the length of stays (usually two to three weeks), the papers that he was writing at the time of his travel, excerpts from the many letters he sent home, and his dreams that took place in Italy. In addition, the book contains eighty-eight illustrations of architectural scenes, paintings, sculpture, and pictures of colleagues relevant to his Italian travels.