Freud and Archaeology
Despite being most recognized by the use of experimental and heterodox methods, the creator of psychoanalysis had also a narrow bond with archaeology. In true, bond is a modest term to quote someone that had owned a collection with more than 2,000 articles — practically all of them originals — of antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China.
Sigmund Freud’s work desk. Karolina Urbaniak, 2015.
The analogy between psychology and archaeology is extremely tempting, but the facts lead us to conclude that - for the disappointing of the grand majority - Sigmund Freud didn’t use his pieces as one more of his eccentric methods of analysis. The relationship with his objects of art was more like the connection that a child have with his stuffed animals or even that the religious men have with sacred images: that of company, admiration and inspiration.
“The psychoanalyst, like the archaeologist in their excavations, must dig layer after layer the patient psyche before he can find the most profound and valuable treasures.”
But when we speak of inspiration, we can risk making bolder interpretations. According to some descriptions of Carl C. Jung, one of the greatest disciples of Freud, a certain tribe of aborigines had the peculiar habit of carefully choose a determined stone and dig it. After that, the place should stay well-marked to, when the individual were feeling exhausted and unmotivated, the same stone can be excavated and - rubbing it over his thighs - he could recover his vital charge. Jung himself recognized later how functional this archaic method was when, already in old age, he rediscovered a box containing some of his childhood stuff. The act to open the box, reactivate memories, and cherish his souvenirs, in fact helped him to feel restored, proportioning a sense of Erquickung, a therm used by Freud to describe the sensation of being alive and strong that he felt when surrounded by his silent fellows.
Later on, Jung would break his bond with Freud, ending up being disowned by his mentor. But the fact didn’t stop the discoveries of the first from corroborate, and even from evolving the research lineage of the last. Who dare to neglect that Freud wasn't already trying to access ancestral archetypes through his reliquaries, said that one of his main desires was “to heal” the modern man from his archaic repressions? Be it for company, admiration or inspiration, the metaphor between psychology and archaeology didn’t cease to reaffirm with the passing years, decades and, passing through it first century, how functional, precise and powerful it is.
Main research source: Freud and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities.
José M. da Costa is a researcher, designer and founder of Storiologia.
