Explore the workings of the unconscious mind through a range of modern and historical objects and contemporary artworks.
The unconscious pervades every aspect of our lives - it shapes concealed conflicts and repressed desires. This exhibition brings some of its unexpected manifestations to light through historical and contemporary artefacts.
http://www.beyondthecouch.org.uk/exhibition
The Science Museum exhibition Psychoanalysis: The unconscious in everyday life celebrates psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge and as a treatment. It aims to explore the broad contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis in a way that is accessible to a wide audience. The exhibition focuses on a key concept of psychoanalysis – how the unconscious is manifest in everyday experience and in artefacts, both historical and contemporary.
Visitors experience the subject of psychoanalysis through a range of modern and historical objects, contemporary artworks, digital animation and audio interpretation of key exhibits by psychoanalysts.
Highlights include artworks by leading artists such as Grayson Perry and Tim Noble and Sue Webster which take inspiration from psychoanalytical ideas. The exhibition also features artworks that have been specially created for the exhibition in collaboration with leading psychoanalysts.
The exhibition also features a wealth of artefacts from collections at the Science Museum, Wellcome Library, and Freud Museum. Notable objects include a cabinet belonging to Sigmund Freud containing ancient statuettes from Greece and an Egyptian death mask. Visitors can also see a selection of children’s drawings from the Melanie Klein Archive, which have never been on public display before.
Other items include a selection of body casts of masks, feet, eyes and phalluses, brought out of the Science Museum’s storage rooms especially for the exhibition.
The exhibition, which runs until April 2011 at the Science Museum in London, is supported by The Institute of Psychoanalysis and is curated by Dr Caterina Albano, Artact, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.
WHAT IS PSYCHOANALYSIS?
Psychoanalysis is both a theory of mind and a method of psychological help. As a theory of mind, it was originally developed by Sigmund Freud, and it has had and continues to have an enormous impact on western culture and intellectual life. As a method of psychological help, psychoanalysis is based on the theory that early relationships with parents, the childhood experiences of sexuality, love, loss and death all lay down patterns in the mind.
These unconscious templates have enduring effects on psychological functioning and can block development.
Psychoanalysis as a theory of mind
Although there has been considerable development in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis since Freud’s day, certain key concepts have retained their place and vitality within the theory. These concepts include:
- the discovery that there are large aspects of our psychological functioning, which have a profound determining effect upon us, but are largely hidden - that is, they are repressed and becomeunconscious
- the understanding that when human beings become involved in relationships with others they bring ‘templates’ derived from early childhood situations to those relationships and project them into the current situation - that is, they form transferences
- the recognition that sexual development is fundamental to the personality and that important aspects of this are laid down in childhood - that is, Freud discovered and provided a theoretical context for understanding childhood sexuality
Psychoanalysis has shown itself to have very broad relevance and finds a home in many diverse contexts such as literature, philosophy, politics, sociology and film studies. It has made seminal contributions to the understanding of cultural phenomena such as group functioning, institutional process, and wider socio-cultural phenomena such as paranoia and racism.
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