SIGMUND FREUD AND ART His Personal Collection of Antiquities

Shows Freud's art collection, discusses the background of each piece, and looks at connections between art and psychoanalysis

Freud was a passionate collector of antiquities. Egyptian gods, Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Greek and Roman statues, Near Eastern and Chinese figurines lined his consulting room. Published in association with the Freud Museum of London and serving as companion to an exhibit touring the U.S., this intriguing, well-illustrated study probes Freud's use of archeological artifacts as metaphors for the psychoanalyst's excavation of the psyche. Although Gay ( Freud: A Life for Our Time ) cautions in his introduction that "Sometimes a statue is just a statue," five essays by various scholars do a good job of exposing the links between Freud's ancient relics, his response to his father's death, conflicted feelings over his Jewish identity, and his desire to ground psychoanalysis on a solid scientific bedrock.
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