Resistance

Every year the Sigmund Freud Museum choses a new focus, a central theme that guides its program: “Speaking freely” determines the way we work at the museum in two respects. On the one hand, when developing activities that are relevant to the museum, we aim to encourage respectful dialogue and an openness to different points of view. On the other hand, it is about analyzing psychoanalytical findings in terms of their pertinence to contemporary issues in society and culture. The topic for 2026 will be no exception, taking these aspects into account, focusing on current sociopolitical developments, and looking at them through a psychoanalytical lens. At a time when the threats to our fundamental rights seem to be growing and our right to freedom of expression is increasingly becoming a pawn in authoritarian hands, our response to all trends to safeguard or even expand dictatorial systems is: resistance!

Resistance—an important term in psychoanalysis, it refers to a psychological avoidance tactic that opposes the conscious acknowledgement of repressed content—is inevitably ingrained in our work here at the birthplace of psychoanalysis due to its clinical significance. Moreover, the psychoanalytical perspective can give clues as to the function of resistance in society—beyond individual realms of experience. Right now, war and destruction, the cost-of-living crisis, climate change and natural disasters are lending growing substance to the factor of resilience. The subject of numerous psychological studies since the 1950s, resilience is now required of individuals and entire groups more than ever before. The question of the willingness to resist or oppose is raised as a topic of discussion in psychoanalysis, psychology, and sociology. We need only think of the destructive forces that are driving our Western civilizations apart with their threats to minorities, women, and young adults, despite this social order having benefited from decades of peace and economic booms since the end of World War II. In such times even democratic forms of resistance become a rarity: acts of solidarity usually only occur when one’s own life is closely linked to the ruin of others’ and is at immediate risk. The recognition that in a globalized world the devastating impact of threatening states of affairs reverberates around the world and that almost no one can consider themselves safe, is only tentatively entering our collective consciousness.

This reveals the gulf between psychoanalytical resistance and other possible meanings of the term—the former is removed from our consciousness, whereas civil resistance can only be applied to social injustices and discrimination consciously—whether through civic engagement or artistic discourses, creations, and actions. The same applies to political resistance to authoritarian power structures and antidemocratic trends and thus remains a key tool in the fight for human rights and dignity. However, one idea is common to all forms of resistance: it always means a revolt against something that is perceived as threatening and destructive.

For this reason, our advisory board have taken a psychoanalytical, social, and political approach to this topic for 2026, writing critical articles and selecting pictures that you can find here on our website in the online exhibition resistance. For this interesting and fruitful collaboration, I extend my heartfelt thanks to:

Rubén Gallo (Princeton University)
Herman Westerink (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Jeanne Wolff Bernstein (Wiener Arbeitskreis für Psychoanalyse)
Lisa Appignanesi (King’s College London)
Oleksandr Filts (Unbroken University)
Gohar Homayounpour (Freudian Group of Tehran)
Victor Mazin (East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis St. Petersburg)
Spyros D. Orfanos (New York University)

 

Monika Pessler

Director
Sigmund Freud Museum