Freud’s print of Roman Forum

Freud used the metaphor of archaeology to explain his excavation of the human psyche. This image of a Roman Forum hung above the psychoanalytic couch in his consulting room in Vienna, then in his library in London.

“Imagine that an explorer arrives in a little-known region where his interest is aroused by an expanse of ruins. He may have brought picks, shovels and spades with him, and he may set the inhabitants to work with these implements. Together with them he may start upon the ruins, clear away the rubbish, and, beginning from the visible remains, uncover what is buried.”

Sigmund Freud
The Aetiology of Hysteria, 1896