Saturday, August 29, 2020


Freud's Vienna private rooms open, bereft of furnitureIssued on: 29/08/2020 -

Sigmund Freud's private rooms in Vienna are open to the public after renovations 
ALEX HALADA AFP

Vienna (AFP)

All of Sigmund Freud's private rooms in Vienna opened to the public on Saturday -- though they are devoid of any furniture since the Jewish founder of psychoanalysis took everything with him when he fled to London during World War II.

"We are dealing with an exhibition showing that there is nothing left here," architect Herman Czech told journalists this week ahead of the Sigmund Freud Museum's re-opening after 18 months of renovations.
"Bringing back the sofa from London would have been a falsification of history," he added, referring to the famous couch, on which Freud diagnosed his patients.

So the rooms -- increasing the exhibition space from 280 to 550 square meters (330 to 660 square yards) in a bourgeois building in Vienna's posh ninth district -- contain only a few personal items.

Those include Freud's books, his tanned satchel and his box of chess and tarot games in light wood.The famous Viennese doctor, theorist, art collector, publisher and writer stayed at Berggasse 19 between 1891 and 1938 with his home on the first floor adjoining his practise.

Only the waiting room, which could already be visited previously, still has its original furniture.

When he left for exile in London in 1938, threatened by the Nazis because he was Jewish, Freud took away most of the other furniture -- the absence of which reflects "the loss of culture and humanity" of the Hitler-annexed Austria, according to Czech.

As part of the permanent exhibitions now open to the public, the fate of Freud's dozens of neighbours deported to concentration camps is also discussed.

Director Monika Pessler says the newly renovated and enlarged museum, tracing Freud's work and life with photos and films and including a library, aims to bring to life his teachings.

Freud died at the age of 83 in 1939.

The museum first opened in 1971 with the blessings of Freud's youngest daughter, Anna.

It welcomed nearly 110,000 visitors -- 90 percent from abroad -- in 2018 before it closed for works.

Its reopening originally planned for earlier this year was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

       As a psychological instrument introduced into psychotherapy, Tarot has an uncanny ability to reflect and predict subjective experience.  While beyond the scope of this paper, I have detailed Tarot’s therapeutic assests in the following ways: (1) its essential visuality and nonverbality in the service of envisioning; (2) its economy, complexity, and condensation in the service of brevity;  (3) its multidimensionality and relative simplicity in the service of “depth perception”; (4) its inherent numinosity and evocative powers that stimulate emotional arousal, and  (5) its intentionality and extraordinary versatility in the service of therapeutic utility and efficacy.2   I would add to this list a sixth, namely, its cross-cultural appeal and accessibility, particularly as an “image-net”  it is not burdened by language like virtually all other schools.
           There is a certain historical irony along such party lines, one which I believe has very little to do with Tarot cards per se, but much to do with the modernist dismissal of anything thought to be ‘occult.’  Why should this be?   It is known, for instance, that of the two psychological giants of the 20th century, it was Sigmund Freud who had firsthand experience with Tarot, not Carl Jung.  As a dabbler in Kabbala, the occult dimension of esoteric Judaism believed by many to form the basis of Tarot, Freud apparently regularly experimented with Tarot cards early in his career.  In fact Bakan (1958) suggests this arcane symbolic tool contributed significantly to Freud’s early formulation of the unconscious:
Participation in the B’nai B’rith in Vienna was one of the very few recreations that Freud permitted himself–among his recreations was his weekly game of taroc [sic], a popular card game based on Kaballa.  It was there that he first presented his ideas on dream interpretation.3
   This information however was suppressed, Bakan conjectures, due to the fierce anti-semitism that pervaded Viennese society at the time.  Sigmund Freud and Tarot cards, who would think?  Jung, on the other hand, the accomplished scholar and enthusiast of a great range of esoteric topics, by all indications was never adequately schooled in Tarot.  In fact, throughout his voluminous writings addressing so many related systems, only one mention of Tarot is ever made, to wit in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,  [paragraph 81] Jung remarks: 

https://moonlightcounseling.com/tarot-freud-and-the-wise-doctor-from-zurich-essay/


Astrology, Tarot Cards and Psychotherapy
With psychotherapists’ encouragement, troubled people are seeking solace in pseudoscientific practices such as astrology and tarot cards
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/astrology-tarot-cards-and-psychotherapy/

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