Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is an absolute knockout!!! First of all I'm suspicious of Bella Freud and her family, it's not really entirely rational on my part but there you go. I find something sinister about Sigmund Freud, Lucian her father is actually an artist I admire but he's a bit weird too and the least said about Clement the better. However in spite of this background I've let the fragrance and the feel of the brand do the talking and I've been reasonably impressed with most of the Bella line. In the most part they are fresh takes on traditional formats and Psychoanalysis is another one in this vein. Reading out the notes and you'd be forgiven for thinking it wouldn't be very nice or wouldn't work but you'd be very wrong. The opening is a fresh blast of lemony petitgrain. Herbal, green and maybe even galbanum/elemi ish? It has a bit of a cologne feel and makes you go hmmmm...that is nice... but not exactly inspiring, but just wait for it to develop. The base feels like vetiver, and cedar, dry, clean, woody fragrance but as it dries down gets more and more masculine for me, it's dry and like no tobacco you've really experienced. Actually come to think of it, it is....slightly. The modernity in here makes it lean toward a Montabacco type of thing I wouldn't be suprised if Iso E super featured heavily in the formula but the tabacco note is slightly earthy but not the traditional dense or stale vibes you usually get, it's very nice indeed. When dried all the way down psychoanalysis leaves a gorgeous deep woody, leathery, scent, but before that the citrusy notes of petitgrain last really well. I love it. I have to say it might just be my love of all things zesty and uplifting at the moment but this stuff is great and actually has me tempted to buy a bottle.

Awful... I don't know how anyone could possibly like this fragrance. The opening is a somewhat tolerable neroli, but I don't get any tobacco or leather.... but a drydown resembling the odour of cat urine. Sprayed it once on my skin and once on my clothes and got rid of it. The bottle is badly designed and has to be kept upright. Thumbs down from me. Do not blind buy this - you will regret it! I tried to give the fragrance a chance and even sprayed it on a tshirt at night to see if it dries down to anything better by the morning but nope, still cat urine.

Listen to PixieKiwi. This is disgusting. Houdini4 says “ you'd be forgiven for thinking it wouldn't be very nice or wouldn't work but you'd be very wrong.” No, trust me, and Pixie. It is not nice. I don’t think it smells like pat pee, that’s much sharper than Psychoanalysis, but it does make me think I could spray this to stop the neighbourhood cats doing their business in my garden. “ like no tobacco you've really experienced.” unless you’ve had a deeply (Bella) Freudian nightmare. This is bonded leather, leather scraps that can’t be used in any other way except to be ground up, mixed with plastic, resins and extruded into sheets that are then embossed to look like leather. But it smells of plastic and glue. You’re at a seedy nightclub with a veil of haze in the air; people of easy virtue, snorting unsavoury things up their noses are the clientele. The sofa you’re sitting on once looked like leather, now it’s cracked and the colour has worn off, and you feel unclean sitting there with a glass of something they told you was champagne but tastes like cider. Oh goodness, no wonder Psychoanalysis is so disturbingly awful, those are repressed memories! I blind bought it, and I regret it. It’s put me off tobacco/leather fragrances for life. No amount of therapy could undo the mental anguish this fragrance unleashed.