Couch While widely discounted and uncommonly practiced, Freud's ideas have become part of the fabric of our culture. FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN Special to the Jewish News T he first book I ever wrote was a biography of Sigmund Freud for young people. Although it was well received by the New York Times and other publications, the only review I vividly remember came from a critic who hared it. After tearing the book to pieces, he concluded sarcastically, "Clearly the author is in love with Sigmund Freud." This was in the late 1960s. I didn't know then that a small anti-Freudian movement among schol- ars and critics had begun to gather steam. It would burst into full flame about 10 years later. Nor was I aware that early feminists were tracing many of Francine Klagsbrun is the author most recently. of 'Jewish Days: A Book of Jewish Life and C ulture Around the Year' PSYCHOANALYZE THIS Suzanne Chessler is a Farmington Hills-based fi-eelance writer. 88 Detroit Jewish News Famous question, "What _does a woman want?" he meant it. He referred to female sexuality as "a dark continent," and wrote of women's anatomy as if it were an incomplete Form of men's. HOW apt was Germain Greer's comment that "Freud is the father , of psychoanalysis. It had no mother.• Were I to rewrite my Freud book I would include these and other failings. (Psychoanalysis itself, Freud's invention, has proved useful mostly from page 83 "The exhibit communicates the central theme of psycho- analysis while making available a variety of ways to have access to that central theme," says Michael Roth, curator of the exhibit originally planned for the Library of Congress and on loan to The Jewish Museum. "There's a core intellectual message about psychoanalysis and making sense of the past through certain key ideas. At the same time, there's a lot of funny, interesting and thought- provoking stuff from television, film and Freud's personal record that gives people different slants on those key ideas." Roth, associate director of the Gerry Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, divided the exhibit into three sections as he showed the development of Freud's theories. Each segment shows Freud's advancement toward explaining cur- rent behavior by searching for unconscious desires and fears-. "Formative Years" emphasizes crucial turns in Freud's life as he built a family, pursued his scientific 8/6 1999 womens problems in society to Freud's male- oriented interpretation of their needs and desires. I thought about my Freud book recently after seeing The Jewish Museum exhibition "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture." The exhibit caused conflicts of its own before first opening at the Library of Congress in 1998. Anti-Freudians, now visible and vocal, had complained that as planned, it ignored criti- cisms of Freud's work. In response the show's curator, Michael S. Roth, included quotations from critics in the displays. The result is an intrigu- ing and thought-provoking exhibition. Looking at the show and reading its accompanying book.of essays, I can certainly see how my little biogra- phy would enrage a Freud critic. Not having had my feminist consciousness raised yer, for example, I didn't realize how little Freud understood about women. When he asked Princess Marie Bonaparte his training as a neurologist and then started exploring interpretive psychology. "The Individual" probes how Freud created con- ditions he thought would help patients grasp the sig- nificance of their symptoms, an approach that would become known as "the talking cure," and recalls his most famous cases. "From the Individual to Society" catalogues the expansion of psychoanalysis and his speculations about the social functions of religion and art and how crises reveal fundamental aspects of human nature. Museum visitors will see vintage photographs, prints, manuscripts and first editions that span Freud's life, 1856-1939, including 1905's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in which Freud opened the door to deeper meanings of everyday experiences. Also displayed are home movies, objects from his study and consulting room and pieces from his collec- tion of antiquities. Clips from television, film and newspapers highlight influences on popular culture. The now-legendary consulting couch, where patients went through guided introspection, is shown in model form. The exhibit's re-created office also contains the original Persian rug that covered the couch, Freud's green velvet chair and an authen- tic pair of his eyeglasses "The exhibit started out with an outline of what I thought was most important about psychoanalysis and much of this is contained in a book I wrote some years ago, Psycho-Analysis As History," Roth explains.