Rocks, Ghosts, and Footprints

Abstract

This chapter begins by examining the impact of the nineteenth-century reception of Pompeii on Freud's 1896 analysis of hysterics' attempts to excavate the aetiologies of their illness. Although Freud never mentions Pompeii in his 1896 paper, it shows that the Pompeian motif of revivifying the dead furnished an important cultural context for Freud's discussions about the possibilities of female hysterics resurrecting their earliest, unconscious memories. The chapter then considers the impact of Freudian psychoanalysis on our engagement with ancient Pompeii. Freud's reading of Jensen's Gradiva shows that Hanold the archaeologist does not wish to dig simply because he really desires a woman. For Freud, Gradiva archives some very interesting thoughts on the very possibilities of archiving, on how we think we might engage with the archives of the past — with Pompeii herself.