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Architectures of Varying Power
  • ISSN: 2043-068X
  • E-ISSN: 2043-0698

Abstract

In , Sigmund Freud metaphorically transfigures the city of Rome from a physical human habitation into an imagined ‘psychical entity’ with an equally lengthy and substantial history, where everything that would have previously existed continues to remain connected to any further developments. Sigmund Freud’s consulting room and study at Berggasse 19 in Vienna famously contained his remarkable collection of 2300 antiquities and artefacts, all of which he carefully curated and arranged exclusively within these two work spaces. What if we were to imagine these founding spaces of psychoanalysis as ‘a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past’ where ‘nothing that has once come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one’. This particular supposition is what initiated the idea for this article, in which I examine seven rooms he either worked in, lived in or dreamt about, prior to the inhabitation of his more famous rooms at Berggasse 19. Specifically, this article focuses on the rooms Sigmund Freud inhabited from 1875 through 1885, during the formative years of his university education and as a medical intern at the Vienna General Hospital when he was 19–29 years old. Abundant evidence shows us that he could be both overt and covert in how he relayed his thoughts, memories and experiences within these habitations. These spaces were recorded and conveyed through a combination of his drawings, written descriptions, memories and imaginings, and are found primarily in his personal letters, as well as various biographies and other documents. I will delve into the emerging spatial and psychical traits found within these spaces, and compare them with each other, to shed light on Sigmund Freud’s growing awareness of his surrounding environments. His behaviours in these early rooms, where he arranged past and present to coexist within the same psychical space, offer a revealing prelude to what he spatially and psychically undertook within his later construction of the famous work rooms at Berggasse 19.

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/content/journals/10.1386/des_00024_1
2024-12-19
2025-02-07
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/content/journals/10.1386/des_00024_1
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Sigmund Freud’s drawings of his early rooms: A prelude to the founding spaces of psychoanalysis
Design Ecologies 13, 11 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/des_00024_1
/content/journals/10.1386/des_00024_1
/content/journals/10.1386/des_00024_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): cabinet; collections; Freud rooms; habitation; psychical; psychoanalysis; spatial

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