Viewing Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists

Women played an important and intriguing role in the development, and dissemination of, Freud’s theories and practice. The authors of ‘Freud’s Women’, the curators Lisa Appignanesi and Bryony Davies’ have drawn on their extensive research for the exhibition Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists, exploring the influence Freud’s female collaborators, from the early “hysterics”, the psychoanalyst referred to as ‘his teachers’, to later patients who would go on to become analysts. Several of those analysts – including Joan Riviere and Alix Strachey – worked on the translation of his Complete Works at Hogarth Press, first published 100 years ago.

Images, objects and footage bring the story of these women vividly to life. The room dedicated to Anna, Freud’s daughter, at the museum, will be brought into the dialogue of the show with new materials, and a new installation by ceramic artist Abigail Schama. Moving through the museum, Freud’s impact on artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego, and Tracey Emin is explored, as well as other female members of Freud’s family, and important symbolic female figures, such as his female goddesses and Gradiva – the figure that inspired Freud’s influential 1907 essay.