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If ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’, a line variously attributed to such luminaries as Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci, then what are we to make of the psychoanalyst, that ‘soul-worker’ who so often sits behind the patient on the couch, eschewing eye contact? Freud himself famously explained that a motive for using the couch was not being able to stand being stared at by other people for eight hours a day or more, finding also that the transference was best brought forward through this technique (Freud, 1958, pp. 133-4). Jung, however, stated in plain terms how he rejected the idea of putting the patient upon a sofa and sitting behind: ‘I put my patients in front of me and I talk to them as one natural human being to another, and I expose myself completely and react with no restriction’ (Jung, 2014, p. 139). Whilst most psychoanalysts continue to use the couch as prescribed by Freud, Nathan Kravis claims there has been insufficient sustained exploration of why they do so, making it his task to excavate this long ‘repressed’ history of the analytic couch, its origins and its function in recumbent speech (p. xi). Much like the archaeological dig of Freud's evocative metaphor, Kravis in this richly illustrated book presents the reader/viewer with artefacts and art works ranging from ancient Greece to cubist art that depict recumbent speech in various mediums, forms and guises. This is a book steeped in material history and culture, and Kravis's methodology is reflected in the book's presentation, which feels closer to an exhibition than to an edited monograph.
Starting with Roman and Greek depictions of recumbent posture in stone etchings, Kravis shows us how in these ancient civilizations reclining at mealtime rather than sitting upright was a sign of status, privilege and power. Then taking us more than one thousand years forwards to pre-Renaissance Christian iconography, we see saints and apostles in various prone positions. ‘In short’, Kravis tells us, ‘the