In class yesterday we discussed the fact that Sigmund Freud was known to have kept a collection of gods and goddesses(antiquities) on his desk, both in Vienna and again in London. The students were interested in this historical detail and wondered what it meant that this positivist, anti-religious reductionist was so interested in these religious artifacts from the past.
I did not know the answer to the question, so I did a little research and discovered that there is a recent book entirely devoted to this subject.
The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection By Janine Burke Random House, 344pp, $49.95
Here is an abridged review:
SIGMUND Freud was an increasingly obsessive art collector over 40 years. When the founder of psychoanalysis died in 1939, not long after fleeing Vienna for London, he had amassed more than 2000 works, mainly from Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity, many bought on the black market, and most of which crowded his study and consulting rooms.
There is no serendipity here, of course. As Janine Burke's study reveals, Freud's deep interest in archeology and mythology segued perfectly into his excavation of the human mind. Indeed it was shortly after the traumatic death of his father in 1896, and during the subsequent research for his groundbreaking book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), that Freud's passion for collecting antiquities - really took off. "The psychoanalyst, like the archeologist," he wrote, "must uncover layer after layer of the patient's psyche before coming to the deepest, most valuable treasures."
Compulsive collecting - of artworks or any other object - is often attributed to deep insecurity or childhood longing, even trauma. Burke posits that Freud's first three years of life amid the enchanted forests of Moravia, and his family's sudden eviction from this idyllic existence because of economic constraints which, in part, she says, were the result of their being Jewish, had a deep influence on his later passion for collecting art.
In the 1860s, 50 per cent of all Jewish immigrants in Vienna came from Moravia and Bohemia. Freud, while "proudly and defiantly Jewish", chose all his life to deny the anti-Semitism of his early years, maintaining Moravia as "the ideal, the lost and longed-for home".
Burke suggests that Freud never felt completely at home in Vienna and observes that most of his antiquities were, one way or another, objects of mourning.
SIGMUND Freud was an increasingly obsessive art collector over 40 years. When the founder of psychoanalysis died in 1939, not long after fleeing Vienna for London, he had amassed more than 2000 works, mainly from Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity, many bought on the black market, and most of which crowded his study and consulting rooms.
There is no serendipity here, of course. As Janine Burke's study reveals, Freud's deep interest in archeology and mythology segued perfectly into his excavation of the human mind. Indeed it was shortly after the traumatic death of his father in 1896, and during the subsequent research for his groundbreaking book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), that Freud's passion for collecting antiquities - really took off. "The psychoanalyst, like the archeologist," he wrote, "must uncover layer after layer of the patient's psyche before coming to the deepest, most valuable treasures."
Compulsive collecting - of artworks or any other object - is often attributed to deep insecurity or childhood longing, even trauma. Burke posits that Freud's first three years of life amid the enchanted forests of Moravia, and his family's sudden eviction from this idyllic existence because of economic constraints which, in part, she says, were the result of their being Jewish, had a deep influence on his later passion for collecting art.
In the 1860s, 50 per cent of all Jewish immigrants in Vienna came from Moravia and Bohemia. Freud, while "proudly and defiantly Jewish", chose all his life to deny the anti-Semitism of his early years, maintaining Moravia as "the ideal, the lost and longed-for home".
Burke suggests that Freud never felt completely at home in Vienna and observes that most of his antiquities were, one way or another, objects of mourning.
By the late 1930s, he could barely move for antiquities; indeed, Burke observes, he had to swing his study chair at a 90-degree angle to slide out between the desk and table, so laden were they with statues and other items. Freud's famous patient Sergei Pankejeff, the so-called Wolf Man, found this induced a "feeling of sacred peace and quiet", although to me it sounds unbearably claustrophobic, if not downright spooky.
Despite suffering travel anxiety, Freud voyaged widely in search of artefacts, especially to Paris, Florence and Rome; and as did other travellers in that golden era of journeying, he often took his collection with him. He bought several museum-standard works, such as a small bronze Egyptian statuette, Isis Suckling the Infant Horus (found by a dealer in a junk shop), which Burke believes is "the high point of his collection".
When the German army occupied Austria, and Freud, after some intensely disbelieving procrastination, decided to flee to London (four of his elderly sisters perished in concentration camps), he planned to smuggle out just two favourite works: a bronze statue of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and a tiny jade screen from the Qing dynasty. Remarkably, his entire collection eventually arrived unscathed in London, where it is now housed in the FreudMuseum.
Burke intelligently conveys the central role played by what Freud called "my old and grubby gods". Yet although Freud put aside time each day for self-analysis, he showed no desire to explore his obsession with possessing artworks any more than he wished to investigate his own sexuality or his addictive and ultimately fatal passion for cigars.
Perhaps, even for the man who invented and prescribed the intense, inner journey of psychoanalysis, some things, some inner gods and demons, were better left in the happy world of denial, unexcavated.
Despite suffering travel anxiety, Freud voyaged widely in search of artefacts, especially to Paris, Florence and Rome; and as did other travellers in that golden era of journeying, he often took his collection with him. He bought several museum-standard works, such as a small bronze Egyptian statuette, Isis Suckling the Infant Horus (found by a dealer in a junk shop), which Burke believes is "the high point of his collection".
When the German army occupied Austria, and Freud, after some intensely disbelieving procrastination, decided to flee to London (four of his elderly sisters perished in concentration camps), he planned to smuggle out just two favourite works: a bronze statue of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and a tiny jade screen from the Qing dynasty. Remarkably, his entire collection eventually arrived unscathed in London, where it is now housed in the FreudMuseum.
Burke intelligently conveys the central role played by what Freud called "my old and grubby gods". Yet although Freud put aside time each day for self-analysis, he showed no desire to explore his obsession with possessing artworks any more than he wished to investigate his own sexuality or his addictive and ultimately fatal passion for cigars.
Perhaps, even for the man who invented and prescribed the intense, inner journey of psychoanalysis, some things, some inner gods and demons, were better left in the happy world of denial, unexcavated.
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