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Mirrors of Memory focuses on Freud's abiding interest in photography and the ways in which his visual imagination contributed to the development of his thought. Mary Bergstein, a professor in the history of art and visual culture at Rhode Island School of Design, has written a fascinating
book that shows how Freud's attitude toward photography uncovers a key to the origins of psychoanalysis.
Bergstein displays wide and deep knowledge of the subject, ranging from her expertise in the history of photography and aesthetics to her understanding of psychoanalytic theory. Her scholarship literally takes her into Freud's library, where she studies his many books on photography, art, sculpture, and culture. She also takes us to the classical archaeological sites in Greece, Rome, and Egypt that Freud visited.
A profound scientific advance in the second half of the nineteenth century, Freud's formative period, was the theoretical concept of energy (as the law of conservation of energy), a unification of what had previously been thought of as unrelated phenomena, such as chemical, electrical, magnetic, kinetic, and potential forces.1 Freud's use of the concept of energy in his model of the mind was altogether modern in his day. Similarly, the second half of the nineteenth century was the period when the most exciting breakthroughs in the technology of photography took place, culminating in the development of film cameras by George Eastman between 1880 and 2000. Photography, then, was also something new, and Freud, a thoroughly modern scientist, was well aware of its importance in both his personal life and his scholarly endeavors.
Mirrors of Memory abounds in stunning photographs from Freud's voluminous collection, as well as photos of Freud himself and his family; many of these photos, such as that of Martha Bernays as a young girl, are not well known to the public.
One of Bergstein's most suggestive ideas is that Freud viewed photographs, like dreams, as concrete representatio