An international conference, Memory: The Question of Archives, was held June 4–5 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, London. Sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Société internationale d'histoire de la psychiatrie et de la psychanalyse, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, the conference was enthusiastically received by an overflow crowd of over two hundred, many of whom sat on window ledges or on the floor of the Kenneth Clark Lecture Hall to hear two days of sparkling presentations. The Friday evening before the weekend conference, participants were treated to a reception at the Freud Museum.
The Saturday morning session, chaired by Pearl King of the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society, began with a presentation by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis: “‘Nothing about the Totem Meal!‘: On Freud's Notes.” Grubrich-Simitis, whose recent book on Freud's texts will soon be published in English, has conducted extensive research at the Freud Archives in the Library of Congress, research which suggests that Freud did not write effortlessly, as is generally believed, but rather that his writing underwent many drafts and considerable revision. From research into his clinical notes, she discovered that Freud held rather strongly to a view of actual trauma. She found nothing in his notes about the totem meal, which she described as a “makeshift speculation,” and that Freud believed strongly that primary memory exists in the unconscious and can explain later events.
Ricardo Steiner, also of the British archives, spoke on the topic “‘Et in Arcadia ego’: Freud in the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society.” Like the Library of Congress Freud Archives, the British archives too are a rich source for scholars, with much material remaining still untapped. Steiner focused on the correspondence between James Strachey and Ernest Jones, detailing how the latter, in his hagiographic study of Freud, omitted mention of several important papers by his subject.
After a tea break, André Haynal spoke on the topic “Freud: Epistolographer,” a presentation illustrated with slides. Freud, a prolific letter writer, answered every letter he received, generally within twenty-four hours, and wrote upward of 35,000 letters. Haynal noted that for Freud writing was a vital necessity, a sort of writing cure for lifting depression. Freud once wrote that he had to recuperate from psychoanalysis by writing. The recently published Freud/Ferenczi correspondence, to which Haynal has written a superb introduction, will certainly yield more of Freud the man; only the first volume has appeared so far in English. Haynal noted that although Freud claimed to have no interest in philosophy, he had a profound interest in Nietzsche which he needed to deny. Haynal noted also that Freud is one of history's great epistolary autobiographers.
The afternoon session, introduced by René Major, began with Patrick Mahony's provocative essay “Freud Overwhelmed.” Mahony advanced the idea that cowardice is a major element in the history of psychoanalysis, a history highlighted by Jones's hero-worshiping biography with its lack of critical distance. Mahony interpreted Freud's profoundly anti-American attitude—his view of Americans as uncultured savages and of all America as “bad”—as Freud's need for a negative object that would allow hostility harbored toward his mother to be split off. America, for Mahony's Freud, is the hated archaic mother. Mahony also pointed out that Freud profoundly distrusted democracy in professional organizations, and that he often exhibited a dictatorial nature, as in his wish that the president of the IPA be elected for life. For fourteen years, Mahony noted, the real power of the IPA lay in the “secret committee.”
To describe Freud's analysis of his daughter and her subsequent disguised presentation of that analysis, Mahony coined the term “Viennagate.” He focused on Freud's lifelong transference to Fliess, the breaking of a confidence with Ferenczi, and the “failed treatment” of his daughter as examples of neglected aspects of Freud scholarship; these omissions, Mahony maintained, are examples of the cowardice he spoke of, an unwillingness to present Freud more objectively. As have other critics, Mahony remarked that Freud scholarship is perhaps best undertaken by those outside the analytic profession, in order to ensure a more objective view.
Saturday's final speaker was Jacques Derrida, who in fact delivered two papers, including the one listed in the program—“The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression”—and a second, unannounced presentation that lasted well into the evening. The first offered a brilliant deconstruction of the word archive and the interesting observation that an age of E-mail and telephone conversations may well bequeath to scholars of the future a very different (and possibly impoverished) kind of archives.
The Sunday program, chaired by Elisabeth Roudinesco and Malcolm Pines, began with Per Magnus Johansson's “Ola Andersson: Pioneer of the History of Freudism.” Andersson, author of Studies in the Prehistory of Psychoanalysis (Svenska Bokförlaget, 1962) was a major figure in Swedish psychoanalysis and, among other discoveries, managed to determine the true identity of Frau Emmy von N.
Malcolm Bowie, Professor of French at Oxford University, next delivered “Memory and Desire in Civilization and Its Discontents.” Bowie viewed that work as Freud's greatest literary achievement, an expression of the profoundly creative aspect of Freud's thinking. Giving the text a Lacanian spin, he presented Freud as viewing culture as an obstacle to desire.
The final paper of the day, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, was “Series Z: An Archival Fantasy.” Read by Malcolm Pines, it was a critical comment on the many restrictions imposed by the Freud Archives in the Library of Congress. Yerushalmi described these restrictions as “Kafkaesque,” as possessing an “insane logic,” and expressed amazement that restrictions are imposed even on material already published. While Yerushalmi believes there is not much more to be discovered in the archives, he pointed critically to the fact that several items in Series Z will not be available in the lifetime of most researchers working today. Such restrictions, he felt, serve only to stimulate fantasies about the archives' contents. On another tack, he wondered how much we really need to know about Freud's life; while we don't know who the writers of the Bible are, he reflected, we are able to study that work in great detail.
The floor discussion that followed the formal presentations centered around the issue of archival restrictions. Patrick Mahony questioned whether members of the Freud Archives had the right to impose restrictions and criticized their working knowledge of archives and historical method. John Forrester, an historian of science from Cambridge University, pointed out that many of the restricted documents are in fact owned by individuals who are denied access to their property. Several speakers wondered who alive today needs to be protected, while others reprised the point that secrecy only stimulates fantasies of deep, dark secrets.
Joseph Reppen, Ph.D., is editor of Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews.