Excavations and Their Objects

A collection of essays concerned with the thematic implications of Freud's deep interest in the art objects in his collection of antiquitySigmund Freud collected over two thousand pieces of art, ranging from statuary to jars to seal rings to painted mummy bandages. He prized this collection as much as anything else he owned, seeing these works as pivotal exempla of the great civilizations out of which the best of the contemporary world had been fashioned, with his collection as a personal "School of Athens" by which that great antiquity might be accessed. The essays in this book focus on various aspects of Freud as a collector and aesthete, and on the thematic and theoretical implications of his tastes and passions for art.