A Man and His Couch

By Harriet Barovick

The important thing," says TV's Homer Simpson to his daughter, "is for your mother to repress what happened, push it deep down inside her so she'll never annoy us again." Though he may not grasp all the nuances, Homer turns out to be just another disciple of Sigmund Freud. That, at least, is one of the revelations to be found in "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture," the largest ever exhibition on the founder of modern psychology, set to open next week at the Library of Congress in Washington. Along with some 200 TV and film clips that document Freud's impact on popular culture, visitors will get to peruse 170 artifacts from the library's 80,000-item Freud collection. They include home movies of the Viennese doctor as an old man, facsimiles of his desk and couch, handwritten notes on his famous cases, and little-seen letters, among them one in which Freud comments sympathetically on homosexuality to a woman who had written him about her son.

It all may seem a perfectly apt tribute to the inventor of psychoanalysis. But three years ago it appeared in danger of never opening at all. A band of scholars objected that the exhibit, though still being assembled, would be a fawning tribute to a figure who was outdated at best, a dishonest quack at worst. Library officials, stunned to find themselves thrust into a battle they were not prepared for, postponed the show, claiming lack of funds. Yet now the exhibit is about to open with hardly a peep. What happened?

Certainly the debate over Freud rages on. His theories of the unconscious and the impact of early-childhood experiences on our adult psyches, his methods of psychoanalysis, his very vocabulary--the id and superego, repression and libido--are the foundation on which modern psychology is built. Yet most practitioners no longer adhere strictly to his approach. Some critics have claimed that his theories were based on shaky science or were contaminated by Freud's mistakes and manipulation of patients. Traditional Freudian analysis is now practiced by only a small cadre, overshadowed by drug therapies and short-term counseling more likely to be covered by managed care.

As word of the Freud exhibit began to emerge in 1995, one combative anti-Freudian, Peter Swales, a media-savvy Freud scholar and former "business assistant" to the Rolling Stones, charged that the advisory counsel was stacked in favor of the Freudians. He circulated a petition, signed by 50 academics, requesting representation of the "full spectrum of informed opinion" on Freud. Curator Michael Roth, while insisting that he had consulted with a range of scholars from the outset, responded by adding two Freud critics to the advisory panel, even as he questioned the motives of some of the protesters. "In the Freud industry," says Roth, "some people get a lot out of being angry." Swales in particular is known for his curious battling tactics, mailing opponents long, single-spaced letters, with copies sent to colleagues or the media; to Freud biographer Peter Gay, Swales added a cutout picture of Gay with his hand colored red. But several signers of the petition have since distanced themselves from it. Nathan Hale, a psychoanalytic historian, retracted his name, saying the petition had become "an excuse for indiscriminate Freud bashing." Another signer, author Oliver Sacks, said in an interview that he was distressed to be "linked to the angry anti-Freudians"; he has written an essay for the catalog that accompanies the exhibit.

Roth says only minimal changes were made in the exhibit, though the catalog now includes several additional essays critical of Freud. Swales, who bridles at suggestions that he wanted the show killed, still thinks "the public has been terribly shortchanged." But another prominent Freud critic, Frederick Crews, who called the original effort a "propaganda campaign" in need of rehauling, says Roth has so far made impressive "good-faith efforts" to create a balance.

"The questions Freud asked turn our attention to problems that remain important for us," says Roth. "We didn't try to determine whether the answers he gave were always correct but how his questions influenced the 20th century. I'm not one of those who think we should forget about Freud entirely." Indeed, the whole brouhaha shows how difficult it is for everyone to forget about him. "The passion over this topic is amazing," says Ingrid Scholz-Strasser of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna. "For a dead science, it seems pretty lively to me."