Led by Diane O’Donoghue. There is a considerable bibliography of writings about the vast collection of early objects, most from Egypt and the classical Mediterranean, filled Freud’s working spaces at Berggasse 19 in Vienna. He spoke frequently of the close relationship between his methods and those of the archaeologist; indeed, the language of fieldwork appeared in a number of his writings. Although it is not difficult to imagine this first psychoanalytic site as akin to excavation, there is a layer of meaning that existed for many of these fragments before their unearthing: they were taken from graves, never intended to be disturbed. However, for Freud’s metaphor to function, the disruption of the burial and subversion of the intentions of those whose objects he collected must essentially be forgotten. This talk will consider the functioning of cultural amnesia that accompanied acts of collecting, both in spaces devoted to the aesthetic and to the psychical.