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The long-delayed Library of Congress exhibit on the life and influence of Sigmund Freud will open October 15 at the Library in Washington, D.C., before embarking on a tour to New York, Vienna, and Los Angeles three months later.
The exhibit, "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture," was originally scheduled to open in December 1996, but was delayed amid a flurry of controversy and a funding shortfall .
Although the Library had reported being $300,000 short of the funds needed to open the Freud exhibit on time, the postponement also followed publication of a petition by 52 Freud critics. The critics accused the Library of Congress of creating an adulatory exhibit lacking critical balance.
Within weeks of the exhibit's postponement, the Library of Congress abruptly canceled an exhibit on slavery following criticism from black staff members.
These actions occurred in the context of a conflict earlier in 1996 that resulted in the forced resignation of the director of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum. In that instance, a firestorm of controversy had engulfed the museum over plans for an exhibit on the World War II nuclear bomber Enola Gay questioning the morality of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After threats from some in Congress to strip the museum of funding, the director resigned, and the exhibit was held minus the offending material.
An advance from the Library of Congress notes that the exhibit will "underscore the contested legacies of Freud, but also show how notions of self, including identity, memory, repression, and sexuality, have been shaped in relation to his work."
In addition, the Library of Congress will publish an accompanying catalog reflecting a broad range of views about psychoanalysis and its place in contemporary culture.
"This exhibit honors the memory of one of the great creative minds of human civilization, someone in a class with Darwin, Einstein, Kekule, and Pasteur," remarked Norman Clemens, M.D., Area 4 trustee and chair of the APA Commission on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists. "By bringing a scientific perspective to human mental life, Freud opened whole new vistas that have unfolded in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, and the culture at large."
By documenting both Freud's strengths and weaknesses, the exhibit will be a reminder that despite his genius, "Freud was only a human being whose failings and blind alleys become more starkly evident as psychoanalysis and other scientific fields progress," Clemens added. "We can only respect him all the more for what he accomplished in spite of the impediments, refine the gold he left us, develop new knowledge, and preserve the humanity that is at the heart of Freud's work."
Leon Hoffman, M.D., chairs the Committee on Public Information of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He spoke with Psychiatric News about the evolution of the exhibit.
"Unlike previously, there is real collaboration" among a variety of groups and individuals representing diverse perspectives, said Hoffman. The association plans to develop a film series to educate the public "as to the changes and continued relevance of a psychoanalytic frame of reference," he noted.
Since the exhibit will run through the year 2000, considered the 100th anniversary of the founding of psychoanalysis, the association sees the exhibit's opening as a way of celebrating both "the founder of the field as well as the beginning of its century," said Hoffman.
Despite the developments of psychopharmacology and neuroscience, Freud's world view continues to be germane, said Hoffman. It is still important to appreciate "the individual in depth, the impact of social forces on the mental life of the individual, the impact of unconscious thinking on both the individual and social groups, and the centrality of privacy and confidentiality in therapeutic relationships," Hoffman commented.
The association, in conjunction with related psychoanalytic groups, is planning a public meeting to highlight the exhibit on the weekend before it opens.
The exhibit will run from October 15 through January 16, 1999, at the Library of Congress and then go on the road through May 2000 to the Jewish Museum in New York, the Sigmund Freud Museum and Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
It will feature photographs, films, and documents from the Library's collection of more than 80,000 Freud items donated over the past 40 years by the Sigmund Freud Archive. Additional material will be on loan from the Freud Museum in London, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, and other collections. -R.B.K.