January 26, 2007 "The Women Around Sigmund Freud" Is Topic of Lecture, Feb. 14

Press Contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639
Public Contact: Cheryl Regan, (202) 707-3610

Who were the women in Sigmund Freud’s life and how did they affect his work and personal development? A lecture at the Library of Congress, home to a vast collection of materials on Freud, will explain the influence that women had on the founder of psychoanalysis.

Inge Scholz-Strasser, director of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, Austria, will present “The Women Around Sigmund Freud -- Patients, Colleagues, Confidantes” at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 14, in Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

The lecture, which is sponsored by the Library’s Interpretive Programs Office, the Office of Scholarly Programs and the Manuscript Division, is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are required.

Scholz-Strasser, who is also the chairwoman of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, will discuss the women of Freud’s most well-known case studies, as well as the women in his personal life. She will explain the effects that individual women had on the development of Freud’s theories, which for decades shaped society’s notions of human sexuality, identity, memory and childhood.

The Sigmund Freud Museum is located in a building that served as Freud’s living quarters and office from 1891 to 1938. Under Scholz-Strasser’s direction, the museum has been redesigned architecturally and enlarged. The foundation, including the museum, the archive and the largest psychoanalytic library in Europe, has been expanded into a center of scholarship for interdisciplinary research. In addition to initiating numerous scholarly collaborations, Scholz-Strasser created the Freud-Fulbright Research Fellowship to support young scholars. In 1989 she founded “The Sigmund Freud Museum Contemporary Art Collection,” an international art collection with a special focus on psychoanalysis.

Scholz-Strasser and her staff at the Sigmund Freud Museum contributed expertise and insight into Freud’s life in Vienna during the development of the Library’s 1998 exhibition “Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture.” The museum was also an important lender to the exhibition and its tour, and hosted its presentation in Vienna.

The Library of Congress holds an unparalleled Sigmund Freud Collection, with 50,000 manuscript items, including handwritten drafts of most of Freud’s major works; a comprehensive collection of photographs and “home movies” of Freud, his colleagues, friends and family; and scarce first editions of his published works, as well as volumes from his personal Library. With the additional papers of other important analysts, such as Alfred Adler and Anna Freud, the Library of Congress is an important center for the study of the development of psychoanalytic movement and its enormous impact on Western culture.

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PR 07-015
2007-01-26
ISSN 0731-3527