Sigmund Freud

When Rose is being clever and speaking to Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the Titanic, she asks him if he’s familiar with Freud. She then tells him that he may be interested in Freud’s work on the male’s preoccupation with size. Now, if you didn’t catch this, Rose is basically telling this poor guy that building a ship as large as the Titanic is the making-up for what she assumes is his small manhood. Rude and also strange given the time period. Sigmund Freud had some of these concepts floating around, but they weren’t published until 1919, and they weren’t popularized until 1920-21. Just in case you’re bad a math scientist or whatever they’re called, this means that Rose is discussing a theory that wasn’t written down for another seven years.