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Discomforted by the stifling atmosphere of an oppressive Parisian heat wave, Ellen Handler Spitz awoke one morning to find her understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis transformed by an erudite and original book that revealed to her the far-reaching effects of European fin de siècle visual culture on Freud's mind. This book, Mirrors of Memory, by Mary Bergstein, illuminates the heretofore unexamined ways in which the medium of photography, widely taken to be a transparent, objective way of documenting and gaining access to a previously existing reality, was relied on by many disciplines during Freud's lifetime. Among these disciplines were archaeology, ethnology, psychiatry and neurology, art connoisseurship, criminology, and travel literature. As such, photography interpenetrated the cognitive styles of the period and shaped Freud's thinking in terms of both content and method. There, in one fell swoop, you have it.
Before addressing the content of this extraordinary book, Mirrors of Memory, I want to extol it first as a paragon in the annals of interdisciplinary scholarship. A model of excellence, it could well serve as a recommended text for authors aspiring to similar projects.
Cross-disciplinary work of distinction, modeled by the book under review here, entails a voyage that brooks no shortcuts. It reveals an authorial voice sustained by strong motivation, fired by imagination and curiosity, honed by a first-rate education, buoyed by tenacity, and seasoned with equal measures of humility and daring. It is work that provides rich opportunities for intellectual growth and for amazing discoveries. Bergstein reminds me all the way through of one of my seminars in graduate school with the distinguished Renaissance art historian James Ackerman at Harvard. Fierce and imposing, he enjoined us on our memorable first day of class to submit no paper that included even a single sentence without a citation. Any sentence without a footnote, he warned, would be excised.