Roman Mars: This is 99% Invisible. I\u2019m Roman Mars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: In 1889, Sigmund Freud was still relatively new in his field. He\u2019s what we\u2019d call a pre-Freudian Freud. He was 33 years old and he was working as an assistant to another psychiatrist and he hadn\u2019t had any of his big ideas yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: But he was about to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: That\u2019s producer Ann Hepperman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Freud was mostly practicing hypnosis at the time. It was cutting edge, though still kind of a controversial treatment. So, one day Freud gets a new patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: A very wealthy woman, Fanny Moser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: That\u2019s Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University and a Freud historian. Freud\u2019s new patient was struggling from all kinds of ailments, hysteria, sleeplessness, pain, and odd tics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: Fanny Moser had lots of doctors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: So Fanny Moser would come in and Freud would have her lay down on the couch, just like he did with his other patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voiceover: Your eyes are getting heavy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Freud wasn\u2019t the only person using a couch during hypnosis, but he particularly needed it to get people into a more relaxed state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voiceover: Heavier and heavier. You\u2019re breathing deeper and deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: But he wasn\u2019t a very good hypnotist. He was kind of a clumsy hypnotist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voiceover: You are hypnotized. (high-pitched cartoon voice)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: So once Moser was on the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: Freud would say, You\u2019re getting sleepy, you\u2019re getting sleepy, and she would say, No, I\u2019m not. I\u2019m not sleepy at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: So while Fannie is laying there not getting sleepy, she talked. At first, Freud would interrupt her with his theories, but Fannie just wasn\u2019t having it. She wanted to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: First, let me tell you my stories. And then a bing. The light goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Freud has a revelation. If you just let patients talk and don\u2019t say anything, they will let down their defenses and the unconscious will be revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: This is the moment when the pre-Freudian Freud becomes the Freudian Freud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: And the Freudian Freud\u2019s new techniques and theories for therapy would come to be called \u2018psychoanalysis\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Most new theories in the world do not get assigned their own piece of furniture, but this one ultimately inexorably did. The couch. If psychoanalysis had a flag, oh, you know it would have a picture of a couch on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: You can actually go visit Freud\u2019s couch. It\u2019s in his last home in London. Freud had the couch shipped from Vienna after fleeing the Nazis in 1938.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Good call Sigmund. Freud saw patients on his couch right up to his death, a year later. We sent our de facto London correspondent, the Allusionist, Helen Zaltzman, to check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helen Zaltzman: \u201cThis is Helen Zaltzman reporting couch-side from Freud\u2019s old study.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Freud actually had a couple of couches, but the one we now associate with him was a gift from a patient, a Madame Benvenisti. She told Freud that if she was going to have her head examined, she might as well be comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Apparently, she found the couch Freud had at the time sorely lacking. So she got him a cozier one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helen Zaltzman: It\u2019s really a very cozy looking couch. It\u2019s not clinical looking at all; it looks like a great place to take a nap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Freud\u2019s study is full of rugs and books and artifacts from other cultures. It has sort of an Indiana Jones vibe to it and his couch is in keeping with that. It\u2019s a Divan-style sofa. Some people might call it a swooning couch and it\u2019s covered in exotic red Persian carpets and piled with velvet pillows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helen Zaltzman: So you can\u2019t actually tell what the couch beneath it is really like, whether it\u2019s stained with the human experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: What\u2019s underneath is a surprisingly plain Jane beige sofa. All clean lines and rectangular forms. It\u2019s almost boring. The couch is what\u2019s known as a Biedermeier sofa, a very popular style back when Freud got it in 1891. It was like something you\u2019d find in a Viennese lady\u2019s bedroom. Domestic. A piece of furniture designed for relaxing and dreaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: But the more patients Freud saw on the couch, the more he wrote about those patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: The more the couch became thought of as an essential instrument in Freudian psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: The couch was central to the idea of getting to the unconscious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: That\u2019s Dr. Arnold Richards, a psychoanalyst who practices on New York\u2019s Upper East Side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: In traditional analysis, Richard says, the couch is a tool. A patient lies down on his or her back looking up at the ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: Just staring up, you\u2019re staring into yourself. You\u2019re looking inside rather than outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Traditional psychoanalysts believe the couch helps a patient relax and open up and understand their unconscious conflicts and inhibitions. Like-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: Why you can\u2019t finish your paper, why you can\u2019t work, what are your symptoms and what are your inhibitions, and you want to understand that. That\u2019s what psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: And some of these therapists believe that even the placement of the couch, like where it is in the room, makes a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: I know there was one analyst who would put the couch in the middle of the room because he felt that the patient shouldn\u2019t be close to a wall, that the wall would make them secure and he wanted the patient to be insecure. He wanted to promote the regression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: The analyst typically sits in a chair out of sight from the patient on the couch, and though some analysts believe this positioning helps the patient feel freer to open up, Freud may have had more selfish reasons. He once remarked, \u201cI cannot put up with being stared at by other people for eight hours a day\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: In any case, when an object plays such a central role to the work that you do, choosing the right one becomes a big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: It\u2019s like a rite of passage. It\u2019s like you\u2019ve made it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Which means good business for the guys making those couches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: We had to have a separate factory just to make the couches because we also made sofas and club chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Fred Brafman used to run Imperial Leather Furniture Company in Queens, New York. It\u2019s a family-owned business that\u2019s been selling psychoanalytic couches since the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: His father-in-law, Irving Levy, actually patented a version of a psychoanalytic couch he designed with his business partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Alicia Brafman says her father was extremely proud of it. Every time anybody walked into the store, he\u2019d saunter up to them and say-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alicia Brafman: He would say, \u201cwe made Freud\u2019s couches\u201d, which of course they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: The couch they sold wasn\u2019t Freud\u2019s exotic, cozy pile of cushions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Their psychoanalytic couches were like the one you\u2019re probably thinking of \u2013 low to the ground, sleek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Brafman sold these psychoanalytic couches all over the country and around the world for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: And the psychoanalysts buying them had some particular aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: Most of them were being made in leather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: But tufting with buttons, a big no-no for nervous patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: They would pick at it because they were edgy, nervous and it would present the maintenance problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Basically constructing the perfect psychoanalytic couch is like building a sofa for Goldilocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: It can\u2019t be too soft and it can\u2019t be too hard. So we used to use a special spring and special cotton and horse hair-hog hair combination to make it, as they said, just right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Fred\u2019s business boomed in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. What some have called the \u2018Golden Age of Psychoanalysis\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: It was very good. It was a very good business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: But then, in the late 60s, things changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: People started to experiment with alternative therapies and the first generation of antidepressants offered faster relief. Traditional psychoanalysis fell out of favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: And you might be able to guess what happened to analytic couch sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Brafman: So now couches aren\u2019t being used all that much. They sit up in club chairs or lounge chairs and they talk to the psychoanalyst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: And even within psychoanalytic circles, people became less certain that the couch was a good tool. Different schools of thought started cropping up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: Whether or not you use the couch can determine what you\u2019re doing, why you\u2019re doing it, and what your theory is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: You could say that two camps formed in psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Team couch, and team no couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: Some would say it\u2019s easier to have a conversation sitting face-to-face. And some people, some analysts \u2013 psychoanalysts \u2013 insist on not using the couch. They said they prefer sitting up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Richards hasn\u2019t really chosen a team. In his office, there\u2019s a couch and a chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arnold Richards: I do whatever seems to\u2026 What works best for the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: There may be a team couch and a team no couch, but even Freud wasn\u2019t that dogmatic about it. He had patients he treated on the couch and some he didn\u2019t, like the famous composer Gustav Mahler whom Freud treated while strolling around the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: But here\u2019s the thing, while Freud wasn\u2019t dogmatic about using the couch, and while the use of the psychoanalytic couch has declined, you wouldn\u2019t know it from popular culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: The analytic couch has become shorthand for therapy, particularly in one place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: Hi, I\u2019m Bob Mankoff. I\u2019m cartoon editor of The New Yorker magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Bob Mankoff is surprisingly qualified to talk about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: Well, I have a background in experimental psychology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: He wasn\u2019t a psychoanalyst, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: I was in animal behaviorist so to put the little rats and pigeons on couches was extraordinarily difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Mankoff says the couch is fantastic as a symbol. It is just what a joke needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: I think the couch immediately establishes the power relationships here. The psychiatrist is in control. You are sort of helpless, childlike, lying on the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Even though real therapists aren\u2019t using the couch all that much, cartoonists still need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: When we look at the cartoons now, we do see that they\u2019re all on the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Of course, it\u2019s not just The New Yorker. We\u2019ve seen the couch all over popular culture like it\u2019s hard to imagine Woody Allan without the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Annie Hall: You\u2019ve been seeing a psychiatrist for 15 years. You should smoke some of this. You\u2019d be off the couch in no time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: And then there\u2019s the Sopranos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Tony Soprano spends a lot of time with his therapist, and even though he\u2019s always sitting in a chair, when the camera pans out, there is a very typical brown analytic couch in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: As if the set designer wanted to reassure our subconscious about what he was doing there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: And when I asked Mankoff to imagine having to make New Yorker therapy jokes without the couch as a device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: Oh, don\u2019t make me cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: I\u2019ve made Bob Mankoff cry. I would just like to-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob Mankoff: I can\u2019t lose the couch, can\u2019t lose the couch. Not while I\u2019m running this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: Thousands of people have made pilgrimages to see Freud\u2019s couch. It\u2019s a relic to how Freud revolutionized how we understand the human mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: The couch, especially Freud\u2019s couch, it came to symbolize an invitation to open your mind, you know, to let someone see it inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: That\u2019s Freud scholar, Michael Roth, again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: It\u2019s a reminder that we have the ability to reveal ourselves and that\u2019s, it\u2019s irresistible, right? I mean, it\u2019s like a magic carpet. I can get on the couch and suddenly I\u2019ll say things that reveal who I am, what I really love, because my whole life I\u2019ve been pretending to love other things, but I get on the couch and suddenly I say, \u201cMy mother? She ruined my life!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: Not my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann Heppermann: You should say that again. Make sure on mic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Roth: Not my mother; if she hears this story she\u2019d kill me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roman Mars: Michael Roth loves his mother, but if he didn\u2019t, and does, it might be revealed on the couch. Freud has given us the id, the ego, the superego, the Freudian slip, a whole number of complexes. But beyond creating a vocabulary of the mind, he gave us a place to rest, to feel at ease, to share our desires, our inhibitions, our dreams. A place just to lie down and talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
stem: roman mars (podcaster) Roman Mars: This is 99% Invisible. I\u2019m Roman Mars. Roman Mars: In 1889, Sigmund Freud was still relatively new in his field. He\u2019s what we\u2019d call a pre-Freudian Freud. He was 33 years old and he was working as an assistant to another psychiatrist and he hadn\u2019t had any of his big ideas yet. AnnRead more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2007,3858,974],"tags":[3828,3829,3830,3964,3331,2044],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64097"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64222,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64097\/revisions\/64222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nperspectief: Why Freud opted for a couch over an armchair. 99% Invisible is an independently produced radio show created by Roman Mars that focuses on design and architecture. For this story, producer Ann Heppermann spoke with\u00a0Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University and Freud historian,\u00a0Dr. Arnold Richards, a psychoanalyst who practices on New York\u2019s Upper East Side,\u00a0Bob Mankoff,\u00a0cartoon editor of The New Yorker magazine, and Alicia and\u00a0Fred Brafman of Imperial Leather Furniture Company, in Queens New York. It\u2019s\u00a0now Prestige Furniture and Design\u00a0and it looks like they don\u2019t have an analytic couch in their catalog anymore.
\ntitel: freud\u2019s couch
\nbron: 99pi (2015)
mopw: meerstemmige encyclopedie<\/a> \/ freud<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"