Freud's Objects. Plurality and Complexity in the Analyst's Inner World and in his ≪Working Self≫

In a touching and well-researched paper published in 1989, Lynn Gamwell, Director of the Art Museum of the State University of New York, wrote about Freud's sizeable collection of ancient art. She noted that Freud began to surround himself with valuable ancient artefacts (mainly small sculptures) after his father's death, in the 1890s, which were also the years in which his scientific and professional isolation was greatest.

At that time Freud set up for himself ≪an attentive audience of objects, including an Egyptian scribe, a Greek goddess of wisdom and a Chinese sage. […] These hundreds of human and animal figures were all turned to face him, in the manner of a large audience. […] He wrote thousands of pages under the watchful eye of Imhotepe, the Egyptian architect venerated in antiquity as a healer. […] Various accounts recount that Freud regarded these figures as companions≫.

However, these presences were not merely surrogates for the colleagues who, at the time, he was still without: despite the success of psychoanalysis, the ongoing conflicts over theory and among groups left him bitterly disappointed. Oppressed by such diatribes, the founder of psychoanalysis always returned to his desk and to his tried and trusted audience, who represented wisdom throughout the ages for him.

A constituent world of external/internal objects, therefore, a source at the same time of comfort and inspiration in a potentially creative, illusory middle-ground.

At the end of his life, after a long illness, Freud decided to die in his study, among his figures ≪his chosen ancestors, his most faithful colleagues and the personification of the truth of psychoanalysis which had been brought to light by him≫.

We are less alone today.

In the rooms of colleagues from other cities or nations, which I like to visit in order to be able to imagine them at work in my personal evocations during sessions, I have often come across at least one photo of Freud, and occasionally one of Klein, or maybe Win