Can you picture a 90-minute public event featuring Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic theory that appeals to a general audience, bypasses controversy, and captures the complexity of Freud's thinking? This was the challenge of the creators of the Library of Congress's exhibit on Freud, which opens on October 15, 1998, in Washington, D.C.
Barbara Jones (of the Committee on Public Information) and I (Coordinator for Media Relations for the psychoanalytic societies in the Washington area) met with Winston Tab, Associate Librarian for Library Services; Michael Roth, external curator of the exhibit; and Irene Chambers, chief staff person responsible for the Freud exhibit. From their description of the exhibit, the challenge has been met.
In addition to manuscript display, the exhibit will be kinetic; film and video kiosks accompany texts and bring to life psychoanalytic thought. Housed in a rectangular room with a rotunda at one end, the exhibit will consist of eight sections, each introduced by a provocative question — like “What desires are so difficult to acknowledge that they must be repressed?” The visitor begins the tour at the biographical and historical alcove then enters sections on psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, where such questions as “What is interpretation?” or “What is transference?” are addressed through demonstrations of aspects of the cases of Anna O, the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, and Dora.
The theory section ends with questions on sexuality and aggression, after which the visitor is deemed ready for an intermission and enters an alcove that is arranged like Freud's consulting room, complete with couches. On the walls surrounding the intermission alcove, enlarged photographs, backlit and viewed through scrim, project dreamlike images of Freud's actual consulting room. In the rotunda and in video kiosks scattered throughout the exhibit space, film clips show the visitor examples of how Freud's insights are an integral part of popular culture. In one film clip, for example, Fred Astaire says to Ginger Rogers, “Tell me what comes to mind.”
From the intermission area, the visitor moves into the section “From Psyche to Civilization.” This area tells the story of the expansion of psychoanalysis around the world, Freud's understanding that societies and cultural productions are compromise formations that moderate human conflicts but do not dissolve them, and the inevitability of periodic eruptions of powerful drives and passions that result in war and civil unrest. The section concludes with photographs of Freud leaving Vienna for London at the outbreak of World War II.
In the section's epilogue, Freud struggles with illness and dies, but outside the exhibit area Freud is reborn. A “theme wall,” upon which is projected more than a hundred images (for example, a scene from an Internet program called “Freudian Slip”) sends the message that Freud is an icon, a cultural force, a man who continues to have decisive impact.
Along with the exhibit, the Library of Congress will sponsor a series on psychoanalysis and film and a lecture series (co-sponsored with the Smithsonian) called “From Psyche to Serotonin.” Like the exhibit, the film and lecture series are expected to be conducted with an analytic attitude. In conjunction with the opening of the exhibit, the psychoanalytic community will sponsor both scientific and public events. “Freud at the Millennium,” a scientific conference sponsored by several institutes and universities, will be held October 16–18, 1998, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with lectures, panels, videos, discussions, guided tours of the exhibit, pre-conference workshops, and a reception at the Embassy of Austria.
At the conference, psychoanalysts and Freud scholars will examine the continuing relevance of Freud's groundbreaking contributions in theory, clinical application, mind and biology, the application of psychoanalysis to literature, the visual arts, international policy, diplomacy, and clinical psychoanalysis. Participants will include members of the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations: Otto Kernberg, Harold Blum, Curtis Bristol, Dorothy Holmes, Stefan Pasternack, Judith Chused, Joan J. Zilbach, Imre Szecdody, Irene Matthis, Paula Ellman, Steven Ellman, and Michael Moscowitz. Museum experts Erica Davies, Michael Molnar, Irene Chambers, Cheryl Regan, and Michael Roth and scholars Ernst Falzeder, Norman Holland, Donald Kuspit, and Allan Schore will also participate. For further information, please call David or Jill Scharff of the International Institute of Object Relations Therapy at 301-951-3630.
On December 12, 1998, the Washington, Baltimore-Washington, and New York Freudian societies and the Committee on Public Information of The American will sponsor a program and reception for the public. This program will highlight Freud's observation that early childhood experience has an enduring impact. Harold Blum will present a paper on the psychoanalytic understanding of the art of Leonardo de Vinci. Arlene Kramer Richards will deliver a paper on women who were influential in Freud's life (to be discussed by Nancy Goodman). Renowned pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton will present a paper, to be discussed by Silvia M.V. Bell, based on his lifelong interest in the mental health of children. For further information on this program, please call Nancy Goodman at 301-951-3440.
Tarpley Mann Long, M.S.W., a member of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society, is Co-Chair for Clinical Social Work on The American's Fellowship Committee and a member of the Public Information Committee. She chairs the Media Relations Committee for the Consortium of Psychoanalytic Societies in Washington D.C.