Abstract

This thesis considers Anna Freud’s (1895-1982) early analytic environment (the combined space of her waiting room, bedroom and consulting room), at Berggasse 19 in Vienna, Austria. It explores the interrelation of space, psychoanalysis and biography, within a framework where interiority and interiors are considered agential tools. Built upon primary documents such as familial correspondence, photographs and relevant psychoanalytic theories, the following is, by necessity, a reconstruction of the child psychoanalyst’s analytic environment. The text progresses spatially through the rooms and examines what Anna considered as societal expectations directed towards her: “Mother and wife — genius — governess”. Beginning with the waiting room which Anna shared with her illustrious father and psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the physical decorative manifestations of the highly gendered term ‘genius’ are explored. The bedroom, the next room in the analytic environment, opens with a discussion of Anna’s relation to the roles of mother and wife, making way for a discussion of asceticism and altruism, two factors which inform the arrangement of the bedroom’s furnishing. The consulting room marks a professional space as we observe Anna’s move from governess to child psychoanalyst. Likewise, the consulting room’s décor leads to a discussion of interiors at the threshold of fin-de-siècle and modern rapport to belongings. Ultimately, this thesis will argue that Anna’s negotiation of gendered social expectations offered an opportunity to redefine not only psychoanalytic techniques and models, but the very environment in which it belonged.