ABSTRACT
Referring to Freud’s lifelong passion for archaeology and his huge collection of antique art objects, the authors show how he used the parallels between archaeology and psychoanalysis to depict his own theory and clinical work. “Translation” is seen as a metaphor to describe the transformation of psychic content, its representation in different layers of the human mind, the analogy to antique script-systems, the work of (re)construction, and Freud’s discovery of the “transference”. As the authors demonstrate, there are strong parallels between Freud’s concepts of “repression”, the “return of the repressed”, and the destiny of antique Pompeii. Referring to his notions of “Nachträglichkeit” (afterwardness) and “Zweizeitigkeit” (bi-temporality), they argue that Freud’s interest in archaeology might have had an influence on his understanding of temporality and time. The paper is illustrated by a number of photographs the authors managed to take in Freud’s house, 20 Maresfield Gardens, in spring 1983, after Anna Freud’s death.
