The collections of the unconscious
In 1915, one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud wrote his seminal paper, The Unconscious, in which he described the workings of the unknown recesses of the mind. To this day, psychoanalysts seek to understand further what the contents of the unconscious are, and how they affect us.
We are all familiar with the relatively benign manifestations of the unconscious: dreams, slips of the tongue, unintended actions, forgetting, or flashes of odd fantasies are common occurences. But the unconscious can also have other, less benign manifestations, that lead people to seek help: symptoms that they cannot understand, nor control. Freud's genius was to describe, and find a way to access, a part of the mind so removed from conscious awareness.
To celebrate the centenary of publication of The Unconscious, the Freud Museum in London is running “The Festival of the Unconscious” in which, among many other installations, Freud’s extensive collection of antiquities will be exposed. Collecting and the symbolism of antiquities are nodal points in Freud’s conception of the mind and are often revealing about the collector’s unconscious…
In the following article, a Freudian scholar delves into the matter.
Read the article.