Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture
Our notions of identity, memory, childhood, sexuality, and, most generally, of meaning have been shaped in relation to—and often in opposition to—Sigmund Freud’s work. This exhibition examines Freud’s life and his key ideas and their effect upon the twentieth century.
Few figures have had as decisive and fundamental an influence on the course of modern cultural history as Sigmund Freud. Yet few figures also have inspired such sustained controversy and intense debate. Freud’s legacy continues to be hotly contested. Our notions of identity, memory, childhood, sexuality, and, most generally, of meaning have been shaped in relation to—and often in opposition to—Freud’s work. This exhibition examines Freud’s life and his key ideas and their effect upon the twentieth century.
Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture is composed of three major sections. Section One: Formative Years begins in late nineteenth-century Vienna, the milieu of Freud’s early professional development. Section Two: Therapy and Theory examines key psychoanalytic concepts and how Freud used them in some of his most famous cases. Section Three: From the Individual to Society explores the diffusion of psychoanalytic ideas, and Freud’s speculations about the origins of society and the social functions of religion and art, and how crises reveal fundamental aspects of human nature. Throughout the exhibition, words and images—often contentious, sometimes humorous—attest to the impact of Freud’s ideas on the twentieth century.
This exhibition was curated by Michael S. Roth.
Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture was organized by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, and the Freud Museum, London.
The exhibition at the Jewish Museum is made possible by: Fleet Bank; Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation; Joseph Alexander Foundation; Fanya Gottesfeld Heller; The Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation; Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation; Amy Cohen Arkin; The NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and The Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral Program, Inc.; The Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association; with additional funding from the Alfred J. Grunebaum Memorial Fund and other generous contributors.
Public programs have been made possible by: Austrian Cultural Institute, New York; William Petschek Philanthropic Fund; and the Saul & Harriet M. Rothkopf Family Foundation.
This Library of Congress exhibition and its programming was made possible through the generosity of its supporters.
Photo of Sigmund Freud, 1921 . Photographer: Max Halberstadt. Library of Congress/Courtesy of A.W. Freud et al.