The focal point of the Freud of the Rings exhibition at the Israel Museum are six intriguing rings.
By ROBERT HERSOWITZThe last ring worn by Freud(photo credit: ISRAEL MUSEUM)Sigmund Freud once wrote:“Imagine that an explorer arrives in a little known region where his interest is aroused by an expanse of ruins.”Perhaps the same could be said for 32-year-old Curator Morag Wilhelm of the Israel Museum, who initiated the current Freud of the Rings exhibition of six rings and other Freud related objects. In her case she was not exploring an expanse, but rather cataloguing a collection of rings kept in the Museum’s vast repository. She stumbled upon an object donated by Eva Marie Rosenfeld. Wilhelm discovered that in 1913 Freud presented each member of his inner circle of followers with a unique ring. Psychoanalysis was still in its infancy and had not yet been officially recognized by the authorities in Austria. He wanted to maintain a degree of secrecy about his work. The “inner circle” were therefore obliged to respect this secrecy and the rings represented a special pact or bond by which the owners pledged their loyalty and trust to Freud and the group’s mission.Following the death of his father, Freud became extremely passionate about antiquities and began to collect pieces from the ancient world. Probably influenced by some of Freud’s very own theories, one commentator surmised that individuals who start to collect things are attempting to restore a sense of order into their lives. In Freud’s case the need for order might have been the consequence of bereavement and an acute sense of disorder in his own life. The fact that the exhibit is housed within the Museum’s Archaeology section is no coincidence. In the accompanying publication especially produced for the exhibition, Morag Wilhelm writes that at the time when Freud started collecting antiquities, archaeology was still an esoteric pursuit, a kind of “free for all.” Thousands of ancient objects found their way into European antique emporia and were snapped up by self-styled collectors like Freud for a fraction of their eventual priceless value. This was part of Europe’s infamous colonial legacy where countries like France and Britain plundered the ancient world and randomly excavated sites. It was only when the great museums of Europe such as the Louvre and the British Museum were founded that archaeology assumed a new and important status. Meanwhile Freud developed a passion for acquiring ancient intaglios with strong connections to Roman mythology. These items consisted of designs engraved onto gemstones and other material that could then be set in precious metals to form a ring.The focal point of the exhibition are the six intriguing rings that Wilhelm was able to track down.“A particularly interesting discovery was that Freud carefully selected each ring he gave as a gift on the basis of its images and that the meaning of each image reflected the nature of his relationship with the recipient of the ring. What makes these rings so special is not only their association with the father of Psychoanalysis, but also the fact that they were powerful objects that established identity within a hierarchical oganization, a kind of attribute by which Freud marked each of his loyal students,” Wilhelm writes.When Freud first established his “inner circle” and the psychoanalysis movement, he surrounded himself with Jewish psychoanalysts. Most of the signet rings were given to Jewish members of his inner circle with the exception of Ernest Jones.Having visited the exhibition I was particularly struck by two of the rings and their owners’ connection to Jerusalem. Morag Wihelm’s discovery of Eva Rosenfeld’s ring is for me a very poignant component of the exhibit.Rosenfeld was a psychoanalyst who was born in New York but spent her youth in Berlin where her father Theodor was a theater producer. Her father died when she was 15. She left school and became a social worker. In 1911 she married her cousin Valentin Rosenfeld. They moved to Vienna where Valentin continued his studies and began attending lectures by Freud. It was through her husband that Eva began her journey into psychoanalysis. The marriage did not last long and after her divorce she underwent psychoanalysis with Freud himself. She became a close friend of Anna Freud, Freud’s youngest daughter. In 1936 she moved to London where she remained close to the Freuds until she began to identify herself with the “independent” school of Melanie Klein, which brought about a rift between her and the Freud family.Rosenfeld mentions her decision to donate the ring to the Israel Museum in a letter that accompanied the gift:
“On January 5th 1939, which was my 38th birthday, Professor Sigmund Freud surprised me with the precious gift of his ring….Throughout the years the ring has been a very precious possession of mine. I am now getting on for 86, and I wish to leave it to the country which is our original home.”Despite her fondness for Israel, Eva never actually visited Israel yet her ring ended up in the Israel Museum and has triggered the exhibition.One of the ring recipients who actually did visit Israel and indeed made it his home was Max Eitingon. He was born in Belarus to an extremely wealthy Orthodox Jewish family in Mohilev. When he was 12 the family moved to Leipzig where he was sent to private schools in Halle and to University in Heidelberg and Marbug. He studied medicine in Leipzig and at age 26 arrived in Vienna after studying psychiatry at Carl Gustav Jung’s clinic in Zurich. He was the first psychoanalyst to undergo analysis and training by Freud. He became a supporter of the psychoanalytic publishing house and then went on to fund and establish the first psychoanalytic outpatient clinic in Berlin. Eitingon remained totally loyal to Freud and the inner circle. Freud referred to him as “the man at the helm.” He was reputed to be the only member of the circle who never removed the signet ring from his finger and may well have taken the artifact to his grave on the Mount of Olives. In the 1920s Eitingon’s educational institution in Berlin attracted young Jewish socialists from Palestine. They were educators who were sponsored by the Hashomer Hatzair movement who sought to connect their socialist ideology to Freud’s psychoanalytical teachings. Thus began the roots of the psychoanalytic movement in Israel. At that time there were just two psychoanalysts in Palestine, David Eder, who was also Chaim Weizmann’s right hand man. The other analyst was Dorian Feigenbaum, who ran the only psychiatric hospital in Jerusalem.In May 1934, despite Freud’s opposition, Eitingon emigrated to Israel where he established the Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem. This was a turning point in the acceptance of psychoanalysis as an authorized form of mental health treatment and the Institute opened its doors to the public at large. Since then “the talking cure” has gone on to become widely practiced in Israel, a phenomenon recently evidenced by the hugely popular Israeli TV series “Betipul” (“In Treatment”), which was syndicated to production companies throughout the world.The Freud exhibit not only displays the six rings but also highlights other items from Freud’s collection. Morag Wilhelm’s painstaking research in London and Vienna led to the incorporation of ancient objects. These objects are aesthetically and beautifully displayed in a space designed by Tal Gur that immediately catches the eye. The backdrop to the exhibit consists of wall coverings inspired by the famous oriental rugs that adorned Freud’s consulting couches both in Vienna and London. Two such items drew my attention. One was the statuette of the deity Thoth in Baboon form. Thoth was the ancient Egyptian moon god and patron of thought, medicine, writing and magic in Egyptian mythology. The baboon was positioned on Freud’s desk and it played an important role in Freud’s work. According to his housekeeper, Freud would always stroke the statuette’s head in an unconscious ritual that helped him to crystallize his thoughts and writing.Another intriguing object on display is a gift from one of the ring recipients. She was Marie Bonaparte, known as Princess George of Greece and Denmark and descended from the family of Napoleon. She was also closely related to Prince Philip, the husband of the present Queen Elizabeth II. Her wealth contributed to the popularity of psychoanalysis and she helped Freud to escape from the Nazis by paying the ransom that the Germans demanded for his exit papers. Marie Bonaparte became a successful psychoanalyst in her own right specializing in sexual dysfunction particularly among women.The bronze statuette of the goddess Venus depicts a partially naked young woman. The goddess of love and beauty holds the ends of her hair in one hand and a mirror in the other in which she gazes at her own reflection.In the museum book the authors comment: “Freud attributed a narcissistic element to women. Their exaggerated investment in their bodies and external appearances was, in his opinion, a way of compensating for the lack of a phallus.”In his essay written in 1914 “On Narcissism,” Freud controversially asserted that women, especially if they are good-looking, grow up with a need to embellish their appearance to compensate for the social restrictions that are placed upon them. As I left the Freud exhibit I could not help noticing the exhibition hall immediately opposite. Five times larger than the Freud exhibit, it is entitled “Fashion Statements” and contains a sumptuous display of Israeli fashion with exotic mannequins and stunning images of beautiful women and their clothes. The proximity of this exhibit to the Freud exhibit was an irony not lost on me!The Freud exhibition runs until March 2019. Curator Morag Wilhelm and designer Tal Gur have done an outstanding job on this very worthwhile corner of the Archaeology section with its superb collection of rings and relics.
