Anna Freud’s adjacent living and practice rooms are dedicated to her work of combining psychoanalysis and pedagogy, which she performed together with her partner Dorothy Burlingham in Vienna and, after their emigration, in London. Several personal artifacts on display have been loaned from the Freud Museum London including Anna Freud’s laterna magica (magic lantern).

Following the exhibition concept, the private rooms of the Freud family are dedicated to Freud’s life as a family father and his career path as a young physician and neurologist. Objects such as hospital documents and medicinal instruments, as well as travel toiletry kits, gifts to his future wife Martha, and other personal objects provide the viewer with information on Freud’s family life, and according to Daniela Finzi, “set into motion imaginations, associations, and narratives.” Texts and manuscripts from the estate of the Freud family will be presented to the public for the first time in these rooms. Freud’s former bedroom is dedicated to the topic of The Interpretation of Dreams – listening stations furthermore provide an auditory experience of Sigmund Freud’s dreams. Original pieces of furniture have found their way into the exhibition for the first time including a dresser on permanent loan from the Freud Museum London which, along with its accompanying intarsia table, makes up part of the original, historical ensemble of the Herrenzimmer (gentlemen’s salon).

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Concept and Design: Atelier Czech/Hermann Czech and Gerhard Flora
Curators: Sigmund Freud Museum/Monika Pessler and Daniela Finzi

In the little veranda, found objects and pieces of language become the protagonists of Sherrie Levine’s and Wolfgang Berkowski’s artistic narratives. In Freud’s former treatment room, works of visual art incorporate core themes from the field of psychological investigation: Georg Herold addresses the question «whether our ‹civilized› sexual morality is worth the sacrifice which it imposes on us» with critical wit. With an «AHA!» Haim Steinbach draws attention to communication in the course of the psychoanalytic therapy in his reference to the talking cure —the foundation of all talking therapy even today. For John Baldessari, photographic references form a starting point for his visualization of the affinity and the discrepancy of the un-canny. Susan Hiller tests the idea of «seeing oneself in others» in her extensive study of the archival materials from Freud's estate. In the center, Franz West's "Liège" is set up. Where Freud's couch presumably stood, its crudely welded counterpart now rises on a white pedestal, less an invitation to linger than a reference to the instrumental character of the psychoanalytic setting.

In the room in which Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, Jessica Diamond’s piece "Me-constellation", both self- and other-referential, is presented. Ilya Kabakov’s installation, based on items of furniture found at Berggasse 19, unfolds its symbolism in the place where Sigmund Freud’s desk once stood, underscoring the room’s erstwhile purpose, and adding the fantastic autobiographical story "The Man Who Flew Into His Picture".

Positioned on the wall of the former kitchen of Freud’s practice, through which it was possible to leave discreetly after the psychoanalytic session, Pier Paolo Calzolari presents "Avido" (greed), a piece that highlights sexual desire.