EDITH KURZWEIL
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ment - Harold Blum, the director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, and
Bernard Pacella, its secretary-treasurer. Among the others are five
(American) historians; the president and director of the Sigmund Freud
Society of Vienna; a German psychoanalyst and editor of Freud texts; and
the research director of London's Freud Museum. The exhibit was slated
to travel from Washington to Vienna and then to London.
The original idea and the seed money for this event came from Vi–
enna, a fact that surfaced only after the show was postponed. Because
Austrians are celebrating the country's millennium in 1996, they decided
to honor Freud - the city's most famous among those the Nazis expelled
in 1938 - on this occasion, and possibly to finally come to terms with the
guilt for their shameful past. But precisely because of this cloudy past, the
Austrians are careful not to interfere with the content of the exhibition.
They had suggested using one of Freud's own titles, "Sigmund Freud:
Civilization and Its Discontents." Still, they did not seem to object when
the American organizers, already influenced by Swales's behests not only
to r:efrain from praising Freud but also to belittle his insights, changed the
name to "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture." The Austrians did not
catch on to the fact that in America "civilization" has come to be consid–
ered too traditional a term, and that replacing discontent with conflict
might herald a distinct focus. Nor that opponents of psychoanalysis might
insist on helping to select which of the forty-five thousand items in these
archives ought to be displayed. They were in for a shock.
In a spirit of compromise, the consulting committee, whose members
themselves do not see eye to eye on what letters or papers of Freud's
might be most meaningful and instructive, decided to ask "younger
scholars," often a pseudonym for detractors, to contribute to the cata–
logue. Under the circumstances, it seems, they did not want to include
Peter Swales and Frederick Crews, but eventually agreed to have one of
their pals, Patrick Mahoney, join their committee.
I found out about Swales's "interest" early in July 1995, when the
curator, Michel Roth, asked me to write an essay for the catalogue - after
another Freud basher, Mikkel Borch-Jacobson, had decided that he
would not take part unless there were more of a balance between Freud
lovers and Freud haters; and maybe because Inge Scholz-Strasser, the di–
rector of the Sigmund Freud-Gesellschaft in Vienna, indicated that she
thought there ought to be at least one article on the link between Vien–
nese and American Freudians. (I should add that I am a sociologist, an
independent observer of the international Freudian scene, and thus a bit
suspect by all "sides.") But I did tell Roth that so far as I knew, when a
curator organizes a show of Picasso's achievements he does not aim for
balance between either his contemporary or current critics, and selects
