Freud described dreams as the royal road to the unconscious. His focus was on the individual, but suppose dreams were also the royal road to a nation’s unconscious.
Banned from working as a journalist in 1933, Charlotte Beradt secretly collected hundreds of dreams from Nazi Germany until her escape in 1939. Writing them in code and hiding them in the spines of books in her library, the dreams are about Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and the ‘workshop’ of the Reich reveal a much more complex attitude to the regime than their conscious mind knew, a glimpse of how deeply the Third Reich had penetrated their minds. A Jewish doctor, for example, dreamt he had saved Hitler’s life and was pleased to be acknowledged. Another dreamer sees people from his balcony goose-stepping and thinks how ridiculous and then finds himself joining them and noticing how good that felt.
The book was originally published in English in1968, then republished in 1985. Ninety years since the dreams were first collected, this new publication is very timely. As once more the world leans towards the right, through dreams we might see how our unconscious attitudes to power and authority, our wish to belong and be accepted might in some way be part of the zeitgeist. The people who did not have dreams in which an ambivalent attitude was reflected were those who actively opposed the regime. There might be lessons for us today.
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Speakers:
Lisa Appignanesi OBE is the author of many books, including Everyday Madness, Mad, Bad, and Sad, and Freud’s Women (with John Forrester), a spring board for the Women and Freud Exhibition. A former Chair of the Freud Museum and the Royal Society of Literature, she was President of English PEN and is on the Executive Board of the Freud Museum Vienna.
Amanda Rubin-Lewis is a Documentary Producer and Director who has worked across arts, history, current affairs and science for BBC One, Two, Four, Channel 4, Sky, and The History Channel. Whilst developing a film project about Charlotte Beradt's extraordinary life, she stumbled across the ‘lost’ English Language Rights to the book and has since been closely involved in re-publishing it with Princeton University Press. Alongside the film, she is also making a Radio documentary for BBC Radio Four.
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Tickets: £25
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The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum during regular opening hours. Unfortunately the Freud Museum does not have step-free access at this time. Advance booking is highly recommended as capacity is limited.
