1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Freud/Oedipus & the Sphinx, November 16, 2009
This review is from: The Sphinx on the Table: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection and the Development of Psychoanalysis (Hardcover)
The Sphinx on the Table
by Janine Burke
Freud/Oedipus & the Sphinx
For those of us for whom Freud is a hero, this beautiful book by Janine Burke not only has 55 fine plates of him & family, his environs & many representations of his vast (2000 pieces) collection of antiquities, but also tells us of some disconcerting faults. This surprising catalog includes:
· "[H]is own therapy was shopping" as his wardrobe & collection showed. (2)
· He wore out his wife with 6 kids between 1887 & 1895. He believed abstinence was the preferred method of birth control, "not a particularly successful strategy" considering the results. (105-106)
· When traveling with his family, he went 1st class, while they went 2nd. (116)
· He didn't send his daughters to university & forbade his sons to become doctors. (279)
· Although he knew the "mother goddesses once reigned supreme" (53), "women's power was erased" in his theory (7), & this "mother's undisputed darling" "used to suffer indigestion before his regular Sunday morning visits to her." (20, 21)
· This father of the "castration complex" had about 17 talismanic Phalluses (PL 15) but no reported vulvas except for that of his Baubo (215) not shown in this book or on the Freud Museum website.
But all of us, like our statues, start with feet of clay & it's in the fires of life or kiln or foundry that some become the heroes, terra cottas or bronzes we now idolize. And despite all the faults, this was the man who, in his search for the truth (we are happy to learn that he got his hand back from La Bocca Della Verità! 179) was the foremost pioneer in the discovery & exploration of the unconcious, showed us that dreams had real meaning, that slips of all kinds are the result of various repressions, & that ultimately the notion of god could be traced to infantile helplessness & dependence on the father (The Future of an Illusion. Only through patriarchal prejudice could he have missed the mother in all this.) His notorious & disputed ideas on the primacy of sex in mental & social disturbance at the least brought the subject into the open in a Victorian world & still rattles some of us. Yet, in this sexualized context, we are surprised that his terra cotta winged Eros (PL 7) is unaccompanied by his partner Psyché in this collection of the founder of Psychoanalysis.
Freud rejected religion but "could not stop thinking about it." (128) "Indeed, his collection fetishises religion through its obsessive accumulation of sacred objects." (129) "He happily surrounded himself with old and grubby gods" (139) & goddesses. For example, the noble bronze Head of Osiris (PL 21), which reminds us of his dismemberment by Seth. As the author wittily puts it, "the very act of cutting Osiris to pieces indicates [Seth's] divisive nature." (23)
And in the context of Freud's desk the beautiful bronze of Isis Suckling the Infant Horus (PL 8) is an artistic & perhaps unconcious offset to his "favorite," the bronze Athena (PL 11), "only she has lost her spear" (92), a goddess who was "all for the father," & apparently never begrudged Zeus for swallowing her intended mother Metis (Wisdom). Athena's bias corresponded with Freud's mistaken deemphasis of the mother in his theories & perhaps she represented his ideal of a dutiful daughter, such as his Anna, who became his Antigone of later years. (279) As for no Venus de Milo in his collection, "she was not his kind of girl." But he lacked," the author says, "the confidendce to say so." (65)
Freud had various images of the Sphinx (203, PL 6), a medallion of Oedipus and the Sphinx (PL 46) & had translated parts of Oedipus Rex in his student days (206), but "erased the Sphinx, the tricky, troublesome feminine" (207) from his famous Oedipus Complex.
This "godless Jew" (5) was enthralled by magical & sacred objects. By the Parthenon for the first time, & viewing the blue sea, in his famous "disturbance of memory," Romaine Rolland thought that Freud had experienced a brief transcendent oneness with eternity, an "oceanic feeling." (199) Perhaps Freud sought, bought & found the transcendence we all seek in the acquisition, enjoyment & contemplation of those gods & goddesses he loved so well & kept so near.
There is so much more in this well-researched, extensively annotated & beautifully written book, & I highly recommend it. Two touching photos show an old, sick & depleted Freud & his populated desk near the end in 1938 London (PL 53, 54), the rows of gods no longer apotropaic. An early user & proponent of cocaine (80), Freud, hopelessly ill & failing, called in the promise of his doctor & was relieved of his torment with 2 separate injections of 2 grams each of morphine. The 1st eased him into the welcome arms of Morpheus, the 2nd, a few hours later, into those of History.
*** (11.16.09)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
