The Study
The study and library were preserved by Anna Freud after her father's death. The bookshelf behind Freud's desk contains some of his favourite authors: not only Goethe and Shakespeare but also Heine, Multatuli and Anatole France. Freud acknowledged that poets and philosophers had gained insights into the unconscious which psychoanalysis sought to explain systematically. In addition to the books, the library contains various pictures hung as Freud arranged them; these include 'Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx' and 'The Lesson of Dr Charcot' plus photographs of Martha Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Yvette Guilbert, Marie Bonaparte, and Ernst von Fleischl.
The room contains the original analytic couch brought from Berggasse 19 on which patients would recline comfortably while Freud, out of sight in the green tub chair, listened to their 'free association.' They were asked to say everything that came to mind without consciously sifting or selecting information. This method became a foundation upon which psychoanalysis was built.
Read more about this topic: Freud Museum
Famous quotes containing the word study:
“Many people operate under the assumption that since parenting is a natural adult function, we should instinctively know how to do it—and do it well. The truth is, effective parenting requires study and practice like any other skilled profession. Who would even consider turning an untrained surgeon loose in an operating room? Yet we “operate” on our children every day.”
—Louise Hart (20th century)
“If the study of his images
Is the study of man, this image of Saturday,
This Italian symbol, this Southern landscape, is like
A waking, as in images we awake,
Within the very object that we seek,
Participants of its being.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)