Lines of Enquiry: Drawing out Sigmund Freud's study and consulting room

Author: Ro Spankie Year: 2018 (Chapter 22 of Gregory Marinic, ed., The Interior Architecture Reader, Routledge; the chapter draws on Spankie's Sigmund Freud's Desk: An Anecdoted Guide, Freud Museum London, 2015) Source type: chapter

Raw file: raw/chapters/spankie-2018-lines-of-enquiry-freuds-study-consulting-room.md

Summary

Ro Spankie's "Lines of Enquiry" — Chapter 22 of Marinic's The Interior Architecture Reader (2018), drawing on her Freud Museum guide Sigmund Freud's Desk: An Anecdoted Guide (2015) — treats Sigmund Freud as "the occupant as designer": the founder of psychoanalysis who, from 1908 to 1938, arranged the two rooms at Berggasse 19 where he saw patients and wrote, without a designer's control over form, function, or style. The chapter's central argument is that Strachey's "first instrument for the scientific examination of the human mind" was not only a theory and treatment but an interior: the couch-room housing the practice of psychoanalysis and the desk-room ("inner sanctum") framing its theory, "the two activities visually connected and reflecting back on each other." Because the arrangement is defined by "the relationship of its parts rather than by conventional design drawings" — topologically portable across summer residences and the 1938 exile to London — it could be picked up and recreated whole; and because the desk, not the famous couch, generated the 320 published works drafted on it, the desk's sixty-five antiquities are read not as "a hieroglyph awaiting their Rosetta Stone" but as emotionally charged objects creating Winnicott's "facilitating environment" for thinking and writing. The chapter closes by reading Freud's own schematic diagram of the mental apparatus from The Interpretation of Dreams as "a model of how his interior functioned": separating function instead of form, temporal sequence instead of spatial order — the occupied interior as the scaffold on which the instrument was built.

Key Claims

The defining difference between designing an interior and designing an entire building is "the lack of control over the end product": interiors are composed of movable elements that the occupant arranges and rearranges according to needs, tastes, and customs — and "the act of arranging allows the occupant to establish their identity and create a personal interior architecture which challenges the traditional understanding of the role of the designer and the concerns of form, function, and style."
The chapter's method is to consider "the motivations of the occupant as designer" through the case of Freud's study and consulting room at Berggasse 19 (lived in 1891–1938; practice installed in two adjoining rooms in 1908), where Freud "moved what was originally understood to be a clinical practice out of the surgery and into a domestic setting."
The couch — given by a grateful patient in 1891 — "is both a piece of domestic furniture and a nostalgic object," referencing the days when Freud still used hypnosis; although treatment shifted from the physical to the psychogenic, Freud kept it, placing his own armchair at its head out of the patient's view, an arrangement "intended to create an atmosphere conducive to free association" — the patient "draped in that flying carpet for unconscious voyaging," Freud "himself a disembodied voice or a listening ear" whose presence was made apparent by cigar fumes.
A 1932 photograph shows the couch, armchair, and rugs moved to the summer residence at Hohe Warte so Freud could continue treating patients during the summer months — "provides proof that Freud considered this arrangement vital to his practice"; the arrangement traveled with him annually.
The two rooms had distinct functions: the couch-room "housing the practice of psychoanalysis," the adjoining "inner sanctum" (desk, curiously shaped chair, library) "framing its theory — the two activities visually connected and reflecting back on each other"; the desk was placed by the large windows facing the double doors and the couch, so "as Freud returned to his desk to read, write, reflect, smoke, and answer correspondence, he was literally looking back on the previous scene."
After 1939 the original psychoanalytic setting is hard to locate because "it is not simply a physical space, it is also a memory, a method, and a metaphor" — clues survive in Edmund Engelman's 1938 photographs (now exhibited in the empty Vienna rooms), in written descriptions by patients (Hilda Doolittle, Sergei Pankejeff) and colleagues (Ernest Jones, Hanns Sachs), and in the museum context of 20 Maresfield Gardens, London; the Vienna/London split means "the empty study and consulting room may be viewed in Vienna, but the contents of the rooms are found in London."
Although each reconstruction differs, "in the act of re-creating, the interior key relationships are revealed – most notably the relationship of the analyst and patient, with the patient lying on the couch and the analyst sitting at the head out of sight" — today accepted psychoanalytic practice and "a functioning part of the 'instrument' described by Strachey."
Invoking DeLanda's "topological thinking," the chapter argues the arrangement "can be more accurately described through the relationship of its parts rather than by conventional design drawings": Freud's interior architecture "is capable of being compatible with a number of extensive qualities, such as distance, area, or volume – and one could also add style – while retaining its function. For this reason, it can be picked up and recreated."
The analytic hour requires complete attention with notes written up from memory afterward; Freud "positioned (in both Vienna and London) a large wooden desk where he could see the consulting couch, so that on returning to his desk at the end of the day he was literally reflecting back on his day's work, the visual connection aiding recall" — what he heard at the couch was "the raw material for the development of psychoanalysis as a whole," and the majority of his 320 published books, articles, and essays were drafted in longhand at this desk.
The hierarchy of icons is inverted: the desk, "curiously anonymous" behind a museum rope and obscured by writing implements, smoking paraphernalia, and antique figurines, matters more than the couch or the distinctively shaped chair — "if the couch represents the method of treatment, it is the desk that tells us about Freud's writing. Considering the prodigious body of work that was written on its cluttered baize surface, it is of more significance than the couch."
The temptation to read the sixty-five desk objects as "a form of hieroglyph awaiting their Rosetta Stone" fails: hieroglyphs require a collectively understood symbol set, "there is no Oedipus on the desk," and few of the majority-Egyptian figurines are mentioned in Freud's writing.
The desk objects work like psychoanalytic objects (mother object, love object, transitional object, fetish object) — "functioning to both provide pleasure and ward off anxiety," representing complex emotional content as much as formal representation; each holds multiple associations: the Osiris figure (the underworld myth, and a gift celebrating the completion of Totem and Taboo in 1913), the Centaur (hybrid man/beast recalling dream-composites and the Innsbruck trip), the Baboon of Thoth (absentmindedly stroked "in the same way he stroked his pet dogs"), the favorite pen without which he could hardly write, the ashtrays "infused with the immensely pleasurable association of the smell and taste of cigars."
Contemporary witnesses attest the figures' psychological function: Wilhelm Fliess speculated the figures facing Freud as he wrote "provided him with an audience, 'offer[ing] rest, refuge, and encouragement,' acting as markers or signposts to his thoughts"; Hilda Doolittle wrote, "his little statues and images helped stabilize the evanescent idea, or keep it from escaping altogether."
The desk "is not functional in the way a designer might use the term, but rather… created what the English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott has referred to as a 'facilitating environment'": the arrangement of figures, writing implements, and cigars "created a secure creative space that allowed Freud to think and to write."
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud pictured the mind itself as an instrument — "we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus, or something of the kind" — and offered an abstract diagram (Pcpt., Mnem., Ucs., Pcpt.-Cs./Pcps., M.) in which perception leaves memory traces whose associations build over a lifetime, mostly forgotten in the subconscious, with unconscious wishes and fears (the oldest laid down in childhood) motivating responses via the preconscious; Freud warns the reader the time sequence matters, not the spatial order, and "do not mistake the scaffolding for the building."
The chapter's culminating identification: "Freud's diagram of the mind… is a model of how his interior functioned. Not directly representational, it refers to temporal sequence rather than spatial arrangement, separating out function instead of form. The ideas embodied in and associated with the furniture and fittings become the building blocks of Freud's imagination. Occupying this model over time gave Freud a scaffold against which to build his instrument."
The relocation and re-creation of the interior — annual summer removals (Martha Freud, 1934: at the Grinzing villa "all his pictures and also the majority of his antiquities were in their places") and the 1938 London re-installation, where "it was a matter of pride that the objects were arranged in the same order they had sat on the desk in Vienna" — "revealed clues to the motivation and structure of the interior that are very different from the traditional design process, providing challenges in terms of representation."

Connections

Concepts: psychoanalysis · occupant-as-designer · psychoanalytic-setting · facilitating-environment · transitional-object · free-association · house-museum · memory (the memory-trace diagram; the visual connection aiding recall) · interiority · representation (relationships of parts vs. conventional drawings; function vs. form) · authorship (the designer's lack of control over the interior's end product) · domestic-interior (a clinical practice transplanted into a domestic setting) · architectural-photography (Engelman's 1938 photographs; the 1932 Hohe Warte photograph as evidence) · interior-architecture (the occupant-designed interior as the Reader's twenty-first register) Authors: Ro Spankie · Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, the desk, the couch) · Gregory Marinic (editor of the Reader) — Donald Winnicott ("facilitating environment," Playing and Reality, quoted from the chapter), James Strachey (the "instrument" description, quoted), Hilda Doolittle, Wilhelm Fliess, Ernest Jones, Edmund Engelman, Felix Augenfeld (the 1930 desk chair), Marina Warner, Manuel DeLanda (topological thinking) cited but not paged (see log) Debates: phenomenology-vs-psychoanalysis (Position C: the room as integral part of the analytic instrument — the desk-side of the apparatus, supplementing Fuss & Sanders's couch-side reading) Related source notes: Berggasse 19: Inside Freud's Office (Fuss & Sanders 1996/2006) — the same room read from the couch-room's side: vision, power and gender in the transferential scene; Spankie supplies what Fuss & Sanders's excerpt set aside — the desk, the writing, the objects as creative apparatus · Freud for Architects (Abell 2020) — the psychoanalytic framework for architecture · Spatial therapies (Qureshi 2018) — the sibling Reader chapter on interior architecture and the therapeutic · The waiting room (Hedges 2018) — the Reader's other interior-holds-time chapter · Inside the prefab house (Schneiderman 2018) — the other Reader chapter on interiors that detach from their buildings · Territory and inhabitation (Campos 2018) — inhabitation as occupation surviving relocation

Direct Quotes

"One of the defining differences between designing an interior, as opposed to the entire building that contains it, is the lack of control over the end product." ("Setting the scene")

"The act of arranging allows the occupant to establish their identity and create a personal interior architecture which challenges the traditional understanding of the role of the designer and the concerns of form, function, and style. This chapter considers the motivations of the occupant as designer by considering how the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, arranged his study and consulting room." ("Setting the scene")

"Although his practice had a separate front door, he moved what was originally understood to be a clinical practice out of the surgery and into a domestic setting." ("Setting the scene")

"Given to him by a grateful patient in 1891, the couch is both a piece of domestic furniture and a nostalgic object, a reference to the days when Freud was still a medical doctor and used techniques such as hypnosis in the treatment of nervous disorders." ("Setting the scene")

"the patient lying with feet warmed by the stove in a perfusion of sensuous oriental rugs and throw pillows, 'draped in that flying carpet for unconscious voyaging.' Freud, himself a disembodied voice or a listening ear, made his presence apparent by the fumes of an aromatic cigar as the patient's unconscious mind was revealed through memories, dreams, and everyday events." ("Setting the scene"; inner quote from 20 Maresfield Gardens: A Guide to the Freud Museum, 1998, p. viii)

"One could describe the first room as housing the practice of psychoanalysis and the second as framing its theory, the two activities visually connected and reflecting back on each other. As Freud returned to his desk to read, write, reflect, smoke, and answer correspondence, he was literally looking back on the previous scene." ("Setting the scene")

"This exile late in life – at age 82 – is why today the empty study and consulting room may be viewed in Vienna, but the contents of the rooms are found in London." ("Setting the scene")

"First and foremost, Freud was the discoverer of the first instrument for the scientific examination of the human mind. Creative writers of genius had had fragmentary insight into mental processes, but no systematic method of investigation existed before Freud." (James Strachey, introduction to The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 20, quoted in "Provocation")

"The following pages offer a description of the interior where Freud treated patients and wrote his theories, suggesting that the arrangement of his consulting room and study were an integral part of the instrument." ("Provocation")

"The transplanting of the interior from one architectural body to another means that following Freud's death in 1939, the original psychoanalytic setting is hard to locate. It is not simply a physical space, it is also a memory, a method, and a metaphor." ("Creating the psychoanalytic setting: practice")

"What is apparent is that although each of these descriptions differs, in the act of re-creating, the interior key relationships are revealed – most notably the relationship of the analyst and patient, with the patient lying on the couch and the analyst sitting at the head out of sight." ("Creating the psychoanalytic setting: practice")

"the arrangement can be more accurately described through the relationship of its parts rather than by conventional design drawings. Referring to contemporary discussions on topological thinking, Freud's interior architecture is capable of being compatible with a number of extensive qualities, such as distance, area, or volume – and one could also add style – while retaining its function. For this reason, it can be picked up and recreated." ("Creating the psychoanalytic setting: practice")

"he positioned (in both Vienna and London) a large wooden desk where he could see the consulting couch, so that on returning to his desk at the end of the day he was literally reflecting back on his day's work, the visual connection aiding recall." ("'Tools of thought, the kitchen utensils of his imagination': theory")

"One could argue, however, that if the couch represents the method of treatment, it is the desk that tells us about Freud's writing. Considering the prodigious body of work that was written on its cluttered baize surface, it is of more significance than the couch." ("'Tools of thought…': theory")

"With none of the usual desk paraphernalia one might expect (such as family photographs, a calendar, or a telephone), the temptation is to treat the sixty-five objects – in particular the figurines – as a form of hieroglyph awaiting their Rosetta Stone. Hieroglyphs, like any system of writing, require a collectively understood set of symbols, and the associations are not so direct. There is no Oedipus on the desk and few of the Egyptian figures that make up the majority of the figurines are mentioned in Freud's writing." ("'Tools of thought…': theory")

"Functioning to both provide pleasure and ward off anxiety, such objects represent a complex emotional content to their owner as well as any formal representation." ("'Tools of thought…': theory")

"Wilhelm Fliess, an otolaryngologist and contemporary of Freud, speculated that the little figures that faced Freud as he wrote provided him with an audience, 'offer[ing] rest, refuge, and encouragement,' acting as markers or signposts to his thoughts." ("'Tools of thought…': theory"; Fliess quoted from The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, ed. Masson, 1985, p. xvii)

"Or, as the American poet and patient of Freud, Hilda Doolittle put it, 'his little statues and images helped stabilize the evanescent idea, or keep it from escaping altogether.'" ("'Tools of thought…': theory"; H.D., Tribute to Freud, p. 175)

"Thus, the desk is not functional in the way a designer might use the term, but rather it created what the English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott has referred to as a 'facilitating environment.' The arrangement of figures on his desk, plus certain writing implements and cigars, created a secure creative space that allowed Freud to think and to write." ("'Tools of thought…': theory"; Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 1967, p. 82)

"we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus, or something of the kind." (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Penguin, 1991), p. 684, quoted in "'Tools of thought…': theory")

"We are justified, in my view, in giving free reign to our speculations so long as we retain the coolness of our judgement and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building." (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Penguin, 1991), p. 685, quoted in "'Tools of thought…': theory")

"Freud's diagram of the mind (Figure 22.3, bottom) is a model of how his interior functioned. Not directly representational, it refers to temporal sequence rather than spatial arrangement, separating out function instead of form. The ideas embodied in and associated with the furniture and fittings become the building blocks of Freud's imagination. Occupying this model over time gave Freud a scaffold against which to build his instrument." ("'Tools of thought…': theory")

"The rather bizarre form of chair I designed is to be explained as an attempt to maintain this habitual posture and make it more comfortable." (Felix Augenfeld, note 3, on the 1930 desk chair built to sustain Freud's diagonal reading posture — "one of his legs slung over the arm of the chair, the book held high and his head unsupported")

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me; nowadays they are content with burning my books." (Freud, cited in Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, Vol. III, 1957, p. 194, note 4)

Open Questions

Spankie reads the desk as "of more significance than the couch" because the writing, not the treatment, is the larger achievement; Fuss & Sanders read the room through the treatment's power relations (the mirror, the reverse panopticon). Are these two halves of one apparatus — practice and theory, couch-room and desk-room — and can a single account of the psychoanalytic interior hold both the transferential scene and the facilitating environment?
The chapter shows the arrangement surviving translation into summer villas and London, yet today it exists only split — empty rooms in Vienna, contents in London (plus the 1932/1938 photographs exhibited in the emptiness). What is the ontology of an interior whose setting and contents are permanently dislocated — and is the museum the setting's third, retrospective body?
If the sixty-five objects are not a hieroglyph, what is the right model for their significance — Winnicott's facilitating environment, Fliess's audience, H.D.'s stabilizers of "the evanescent idea"? Spankie names all three without adjudicating; which best explains why "the objects were arranged in the same order" as a matter of pride?
Freud's mind-diagram is offered as "a model of how his interior functioned" — temporal, functional, non-representational. Can interiors in general be drawn this way (as diagrams of function rather than plans of form), and what would an occupant-as-designer drawing convention look like?
Strachey's instrument was "perfected… gradually" as the difficulties became apparent: the chapter implies the interior co-evolved with the method (1908 installation, annual summer re-installations, the 1930 Augenfeld chair). How did changes in the theory register in the rooms — and can a room be dated like a theory?
Does the "occupant as designer" thesis generalize? Freud was a professional writer-therapist designing for a single user (himself) with unusual resources; the chapter's opening claims arranging is general to interior occupation. What distinguishes ordinary rearrangement from an arrangement that becomes "an integral part of the instrument" — and is the difference simply the writing that records it?