As Ernest Jones (1957) says in his masterly biography of Freud, ‘Freud was all his life engrossed with the great problem of how man came to be man.’ In his lifelong search for an answer to this question, Freud had learned that the human mind and human civilization originated from man’s past experiences and past developments. He discovered that individuals and their culture are the product of their past, while at the same time they always keep being pulled back to it over and over again.
Arthur Miller, the American playwright, says in his autobiography Timebends – A Life (1988), ‘I could not live, not happily, without the myths of childhood, which at bottom feed our everlasting becoming and our faith in self and world.’
It is natural then and not really surprising that Freud, with his interest in these powerful life-giving forces in the development of the individual, was also fascinated by past cultures and their surviving signs, like mythology, archaeology, literature and antiquities.
Freud was fundamentally a discoverer, or a ‘conquistador’ as he used to call himself in his youth. This passion, together with his awakened intellectual curiosity about the origin of the mind and for that matter of civilization, led him to gather a remarkable and serious collection of antiquities, in what became his only and passionate serious hobby.
Although it was not unusual for middle class Victorian professionals of the time to collect such pieces, by the end of his life Freud was in possession of a varied and substantial collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman pieces amongst many others.
The fact that Freud’s and his wife Martha’s ashes are kept in a very cherished Greek Krater antiquity given to him as a gift by Princess Marie Bonaparte, at Golder’s Green Crematorium in London, reflects in a poignant and symbolic way, Freud’s deep commitment to and belief in the transforming and containing value of the past.
The archaeological metaphor of finding the past in the present and the present in the past, together with the knowledge that it is possible to reconstruct the past from the few vestiges found in the present, provided Freud with a very important tool and a means of discovering the essence of
what human beings are about, but also a valuable way of searching out the elusive secrets and phantasies contained in people’s remote unconscious.
There are two interesting examples that illustrate these points very well.
Fragment of a wall painting depicting a female figure and a large bird, Roman First century BC – first century AD, Plaster with paint. Freud Museum Ref: 3977. © Freud Museum London.
In the treatment of his patient ‘Dora’ (Freud, 1901), Freud built up a picture of her personal history and personality by using the precious vestiges of Dora’s life and past that came to light during her short and incomplete analysis with him, after being long buried in her unconscious, just as archaeologists do when they discover fragments of relics from the past. In his introduction to the case history, Freud wrote,
In face of the incompleteness of my analytic results, I had no choice but to follow the example of those discoverers whose good fortune it is to bring to the light of day after their long burial the priceless though mutilated relics of antiquity. I have restored what is missing, taking the best models known to me from other analyses; but, like a conscientious archaeologist, I have not omitted to mention in each case where the authentic parts end and my constructions begin (Freud, 1905, p.12).
This is a form of psychological ‘resuscitation’ as Jones describes it in his biography of Freud (Jones, 1957). In this process of reconstruction, analogies from other case studies are used, just as archaeologists do, when they draw on their knowledge of different civilisations, to fill the gaps in their knowledge of a specific area.
I will quote from Freud’s own words from his paper Constructions in Analysis (1937), regarding this point:
[The analyst’s] work of construction, or, if it is preferred, of reconstruction, resembles to a great extent an archaeologist’s excavation of some dwelling-place that has been destroyed and buried or of some ancient edifice. The two processes are in fact identical, except that the analyst works under better conditions and has more material at his command to assist him, since what he is dealing with is not something destroyed but something that is still alive – and perhaps for another reason as well. But just as the archaeologist builds up the walls of the building from the foundations that have remained standing, determines the number and position of the columns from depressions in the floor and reconstructs the mural decorations and paintings from the remains found in the debris, so does the analyst proceed when he draws his inferences from the fragments of memories, from the associations and from the behaviour of the subject of the analysis (Freud, 1937, p.259).
This is a very fine form of investigating the mysterious and the unknown, although nonetheless a difficult one, particularly when one does not want to make the serious mistake of confusing the construction of the hypothetical, with the evidence of the real.
The second example is the explanation Freud once apparently gave to a patient who was struggling to grasp the meaning of the unconscious, that conscious content ‘wears away’ while what is unconscious remains relatively unchanged. He illustrated his point by directing the patient’s attention to the antique objects in the consulting room, and then saying to the patient that they were only objects found in a tomb, but that their burial had been their only reason for their preservation and survival.
Freud had realised that repression is not only a potential cause of psychopathology, but also a potential source for the preservation of our identity and of the essence of who we are and what we become (Freud, 1937). As he writes,
All of the essentials are preserved; even things that seem completely forgotten are present somehow and somewhere, and have merely been buried and made inaccessible to the subject. Indeed, it may, as we know, be doubted whether any psychical structure can really be the victim of total destruction. It depends only upon analytic technique whether we shall succeed in bringing what is concealed completely to light. There are only two other facts that weigh against the extraordinary advantage which is thus enjoyed by the work of analysis; namely, that psychical ob- jects are incomparably more complicated than the excavator’s material ones and that we have insufficient knowledge of what we may expect to find, since their finer structure contains so much that is still mysterious (Freud, 1937, p.260).
Freud’s mind, work and life were all interconnected by this important principle and belief: that the past is in the present and the present is in the past. His life, his work and his hobby were all marked by the same interest and passion for this quest. It was a full-time commitment that did not end until his death, and started when his parents, particularly his mother, at an early age assigned him the role of the one who ‘was going to make an impact on the world’, in what nowadays would be understood as the uncanny fulfilment of a family myth imposed on him by his parents (Gay, 1995).
Most of Freud’s collection of antiquities can be found in the Freud Museum in London. In the lectures I have given there over the years, I have been struck by the way students of all different backgrounds and levels of education have experienced and reacted to Freud’s antiquities, by the way they were located in his consulting room and around his working desk.
Grotesque head, Greek, Hellenistic period, 100 BC–AD 100, Terracotta. Freud Museum Ref: 3752. © Freud Museum London.
The consulting room is full of them and the desk surface is filled with them, creating the atmosphere of being in an archaeologist’s studio while at the same time, giving a sense of being in a special chamber of the gods, surrounded and protected by these mythical and mysterious creatures.
Some students have experienced this environment as an invitation to a ‘journey into the past’, others felt as if they were ‘going on a journey into Freud’s inner world’, a few felt as though being in the presence of the antiquities gave them the inspiration to search the unconscious that Freud himself must have felt. Others have felt ‘intimidated by the presence of such overwhelming icons’, or ‘unable to connect with Freud, who was so well surrounded and protected by so many gods’, or even that ‘Freud was taking refuge in the past and in the phantasy world, neglecting in this way his perception of present reality and present events.’
Whatever it is or however one perceives Freud’s relationship to these collection of precious antiquities, his passionate and intense relationship with them helped him to have the ‘other’ partner or companion who is always so much needed in any great journey of personal and scientific discovery.
His patients, colleagues and friends were or acted many times the role of the ‘other’ in Freud’s journeys of discovery, but in the place of solitude and reverie he needed so much, in order for his creative process to explore the mysteries of the mind and the unconscious, these antiquities played a very crucial role of containment and illumination for him, by becoming the precious and stimulating ‘other’ in relation to whom Freud could enact his own transferential needs and phantasies, in his personal journey of discovery and self revelation.
I believe that this passionate relationship with them, helped him to capture the familiar in the unknown, the everlasting in what has been lost, and the irrational in what is rational. This is the very essence of what I think psychoanalysis is all about.
References
Freud S, 1905 [1901], Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria, SE
VII. London, Hogarth Press.
Freud S, 1937, Constructions in Analysis, SE XXIII, London, Hogarth Press.
Gay P, 1995, Freud: A Life For Our Time, London, Macmillan.
Jones E, 1980, Sigmund Freud: Life And Work, Vol III: The Last Phase, London, Hogarth Press.
Miller A, 1988, Timebends – A Life, London, Methuen.
Grayson Perry, In Praise of Shadows, 2005, Glassed ceramic. Victoria and Miro Warren. Courtesy of the artist. © Grayson Perry
Acknowledgment
Psychoanalysis: The unconscious in everyday life
Section name/author 1 Psychoanalysis The unconscious in everyday life The Institute of Psychoanalysis & Artakt The Science Museum, 13 October 2010 – 15 April 2011
Leon Kleimberg is a training and supervising analyst for the British Psycho-Analytical Society and works in full-time private practice in London. He was a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic Adult Department and UCL Psychoanalysis Unit. He supervises and teaches in several Psychoanalytic Societies around the world and has published papers both in the UK and abroad on topics including psychoanalysis and creativity, psychopathology, immigration, and football. Currently, he is interested in the function and role of illusion and belief in human development and their clinical manifestations and processes.
Comments
Excellent paper !
M Kleimberg has been able to allow us to deep in Freud story and understand his passion and contributions to the human mind, building a strong relationship between the past the present and also discovery Freud passion for the ancient