Exhibit: ‘Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture’; reviewed by Nellie L. Thompson

‘Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture’, an exhibit organized by the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, opened at the Library on 15 October 1998. It draws not only on the Library's own rich holdings, the Sigmund Freud Archives, but also on those of the Freud Museum in London and the Sigmund Freud-Museum in Vienna. I visited the exhibit at The Jewish Museum in New York where it was on display from 18 April until 9 September 1999.1 In 1995, before plans for the exhibit were formally announced, an intense controversy ensued when critics of Freud and psychoanalysis attacked it as one-sided and too favorable to Freud. The exhibit was postponed and the disclaimer by the Library of Congress that this was due to budgetary considerations was greeted with skepticism by many scholars and psychoanalysts.2

The exhibit's curator, Michael S. Roth, an historian and the author of Psychoanalysis as History: Negation and Freedom in Freud (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1987) has repeatedly affirmed that its purpose is to illustrate the impact of Freud's thought on twentieth-century culture. It is not meant to advocate either for or against the validity of his theories. The wall that introduces the exhibit reflects this theme. It is taken up with magazine covers, book jackets, cartoons, advertisements, souvenirs, website pages, and games whose display demonstrates the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis on twentieth-century culture. The exhibit itself is divided into three sections. Section One, Formative Years, describes Freud's family background, and the political and social ferment of late nineteenth-century Vienna. Freud's early professional milieu, his interest in neuroscience and his initial fascination with cocaine are duly noted. The assemblage of family photographs, Freud's birth certificate, Jacob Freud's recording of his son's birth in the family Bible and Martha Bernay's engagement album imbue this section with a human poignancy.

Section Two, The Individual: T