sigmund freud's collection an archaeology of the mind

Balsamarium
Etruscan, 3rd century BC
bronze, 9.4 x 7.2 x 6.5 cm
LDFRD 3029
Collection Freud Museum London
This Balsamarium, that held perfumed oil, incense or ointments, is
decorated with the faces of a maenad and a satyr.
Maenads and satyrs were members of the retinue of the Greek god
Dionysus. The dark-skinned satyrs, part-man, part-goat with cloven
hooves and horns, terrifi ed shepherds as they chased nymphs across
the landscape. Maenads, the priestesses of Dionysus, could be equally
intimidating as they caroused in ecstatic abandon, loudly playing
drums and fl utes or tearing live animals to pieces and devouring their
fl esh. In ancient Greece, women who worshipped Dionysus periodically
quit their homes and family to participate in all-female rituals that
honoured the god. These seem to have involved frenzied dancing,
leading to trance and ecstasy (ekstasis: standing outside oneself),
sometimes assisted by copious quantities of wine.
Freud arranged the Balsamarium on the edge of his desk, so the
maenad faced toward him while the grinning satyr looked toward
his consulting room. The maenad’s gaze is fi xed and wide-eyed, her
lips slightly parted. She appears to be in a trance. In contrast her
companion is earthy, cheeky and ugly. Maenads usually remained
chaste, unlike the priapic satyrs. In Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality, Freud explored the notion that everyone is fundamentally
bisexual. ‘In human beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be
found in either a psychological or a biological sense. Every individual
on the contrary displays a mixture of the character traits belonging to
his own and to the opposite sex.’ 1
The Balsamarium depicts such a fusion with male and female
literally roped together by the headdress worn by both maenad and
satyr. While the female face better realised, each is dependent on the
other: the woman’s ecstatic, spiritual gaze and the libidinous male’s
alert, mischevious look. Freud believed that libido is ‘invariably and
necessarily of a masculine nature, whether it occurs in men or in
women and irrespectively of whether its object is a man or a woman.’ 2
By turning the maenad towards him, Freud determined that the little
bronze functioned as a deity of threshholds, a god of margins who
symbolises Freud’s proposition that there is a border where masculine
and feminine meet, and merge.
1. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, (1905), S.E.,vol. VII, p. 220. This
sentence was added in 1915.
2. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, (1905), p. 219.
28