ABSTRACT
The archaeological sphere of imagination that pervades the pages of Sigmund Freud has had a lasting effect on the conceptualisation, both professional and popular, of psychoanalytical discourse. The best known and most often cited of Freud’s archaeological metaphors is the dramatic, multi-dimensional picture he draws of the “Eternal City” Rome in Civilization and its Discontents. Suzanne Cassirer-Bernfeld’s innovative and insightful study was the first to offer a closer examination of Freud’s archaeological interests, thereby opening up a new field of research that attracted not only Freud-biographers. The passage involves more than an increasingly sophisticated analogy to modern archaeological techniques in distinguishing “authentic” from “constructed” elements. Just like the rows of pillars in the architecture of vast buildings, so are Freud’s psycho-archaeological polarities put in place to support larger conceptual structures. The profound ambivalence of Freud’s archaeological excavations resurfaces as a splitting of the ego in the process of defence.
