Latest news with #SigmundFreud
The Guardian
6 days ago
- The Guardian
Freud Museum faces call for inquiry over bullying and board misconduct claims
A bitter row at the Freud Museum in London has resulted in it facing calls for an official investigation into allegations of political interference and 'autocratic' board decision-making that critics say put the future of the institution at risk. The museum, in Hampstead, was the final home of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and his daughter Anna Freud, a children's psychoanalyst, and is dedicated to promoting their intellectual and cultural legacy. A 20-strong group of writers, academics and psychoanalysts – including Susie Orbach, Hanif Kureishi and Marina Warner – have called for the charities regulator to investigate what they allege to be 'serious issues' with the management and governance of the museum. These include claims the museum's board has alienated staff, promoted a divisive and partisan approach to psychoanalytic practice in breach of the museum's charter, and attempted to block visiting speakers for 'political' reasons. 'We are concerned that the historic role of the museum, the importance of the house and its collections, its commitment to scholarship and research as well as the interpretation of contemporary society through a wide-ranging psychoanalytic lens, is being undermined,' the group said in a letter to the Charity Commission. The group who call themselves 'friends' of the museum, and include former trustees, directors and current honorary fellows, allege an intimidating atmosphere has led to a third of the museum's staff leaving in the past year. The letter, seen by the Guardian, claims the museum is effectively run in a 'divisive' and 'unhealthy' way by a small clique of trustees in contravention of the principles of good charity governance. 'Many of us have worked at or with the museum since its opening in 1986, and there has simply never been a comparable degradation of staff-board relations or any comparable efforts to run the museum in an autocratic and partisan way.' Speaking on behalf of the Freud Museum board, a trustee, Susanna Abse, told the Guardian it disputed the allegations, which it called unevidenced and unsubstantiated. She said it had written to the friends with an offer of mediation. 'We have nothing to hide. There are no secrets, no special agenda,' she said. The Freud Museum has itself filed a 'serious incident' report with the Charity Commission – effectively asking the regulator to check the board is compliant with its legal duties and assess its handling of the row. Charity trustees are required to file 'full and frank' serious incident reports to the regulator where they have concerns that an adverse event risks significant harm to the charity's staff and beneficiaries, finances or reputation. Sigmund Freud lived in the house in Maresfield Gardens for the final year of his life after fleeing the Nazis in Austria in 1938. The house, which has been largely preserved as it was then, contains his famous consulting couch, voluminous library, and collection of antiquities. The house became a museum in 1982 and holds regular exhibitions, tours, seminars and conferences, as well as running educational outreach programmes with the aim of bringing ''psychoanalytic ideas to life' for the wider public. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Although the friends group first raised issues with the board by letter in January and formally met with trustees to discuss them in March, it called for the regulator to intervene as it feels its concerns have not been adequately addressed. Last year the museum was criticised by pro-Israel lobbyists after it hosted an event by Red Clinic, a group of pro-Palestine radical psychoanalysts unaffiliated to the museum. The museum did not cancel the event, saying it had simply rented out the space. The friends group claims that a planned lecture at the museum by the philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler – noted for her trenchant views on the Israel-Gaza conflict – had been delayed at the behest of the board. Abse confirmed this, adding that in common with many institutions it had to respond to pressure from both sides of the debate. 'It is not the business of a museum to promulgate any one view and we have to manage that,' Abse said. She said the museum had been 'caught between a rock and a hard place' on the issue. Other signatories to the letter include the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the novelist and academic Jacqueline Rose, the psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips, Butler, and two former directors of the museum, Carol Seigel and Michael Molnar. Current honorary fellows of the museum who have put their names to the letter include the psychoanalyst and academic Darian Leader – also a former trustee – and the writer Lisa Appignanesi. Orbach is also a honorary fellow. The museum is recruiting a new director after the departure of Giuseppe Albano in May. The friends group said that 'in this current unhappy climate' the board's governance issues should be addressed before a successor was appointed. A Charity Commission spokesperson said: 'We can confirm that, in line with our guidance, the Freud Museum has filed a serious incident report relating to a dispute with an external group. We are assessing information to determine if there is a role for the commission.'
The Guardian
7 days ago
- The Guardian
Freud Museum faces inquiry over bullying and board misconduct claims
A bitter row at Freud Museum in London has resulted in it facing an official probe into allegations of political interference and 'autocratic' board decision-making that critics say put the future of the institution at risk. The museum, in Hampstead, was the final home of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and his daughter Anna Freud, a children's psychoanalyst, and is dedicated to promoting their intellectual and cultural legacy. A 20-strong group of writers, academics and psychoanalysts – including Susie Orbach, Hanif Kureishi and Marina Warner – have called for the charities regulator to investigate what they allege to be 'serious issues' with the management and governance of the museum. These include claims the museum's board has alienated staff, promoted a divisive and partisan approach to psychoanalytic practice in breach of the museum's charter, and attempted to block visiting speakers for 'political' reasons. 'We are concerned that the historic role of the museum, the importance of the house and its collections, its commitment to scholarship and research as well as the interpretation of contemporary society through a wide-ranging psychoanalytic lens, is being undermined,' the group said in a letter to the Charity Commission. The group who call themselves 'friends' of the museum, and include former trustees, directors and current honorary fellows, alleges an intimidating atmosphere has led to a third of the museum's staff leaving in the past year. The letter, seen by the Guardian, claims the museum is effectively run in a 'divisive' and 'unhealthy' way by a small clique of trustees in contravention of the principles of good charity governance. 'Many of us have worked at or with the museum since its opening in 1986, and there has simply never been a comparable degradation of staff-board relations or any comparable efforts to run the museum in an autocratic and partisan way.' Speaking on behalf of the Freud Museum board, trustee Susanna Abse told the Guardian it disputed the allegations, which it called unevidenced and unsubstantiated. She said it had written to the Friends with an offer of mediation. 'We have nothing to hide. There are no secrets, no special agenda,' she said. The Freud Museum has itself filed a 'serious incident' report with the Charity Commission – effectively asking the regulator to check the board is compliant with its legal duties and assess its handling of the row. Charity trustees are required to file 'full and frank' serious incident reports to the regulator where they have concerns that an adverse event risks significant harm to the charity's staff and beneficiaries, finances or reputation. Sigmund Freud lived in the house in Maresfield Gardens for the final year of his life after fleeing the Nazis in Austria in 1938. The house, which has been largely preserved as it was then, contains his famous consulting couch, voluminous library, and collection of antiquities. The house became a museum in 1982 and holds regular exhibitions, tours, seminars and conferences, as well as running educational outreach programmes with the aim of bringing ''psychoanalytic ideas to life' for the wider public. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Although the Friends group first raised issues with the board by letter in January and formally met with trustees to discuss them in March, it called for the regulator to intervene as it feels its concerns have not been adequately addressed. Last year the museum was criticised by pro-Israel lobbyists after it hosted an event by Red Clinic, a group of pro-Palestine radical psychoanalysts unaffiliated to the museum. The museum did not cancel the event, saying it had simply rented out the space. The Friends group claims that a planned lecture at the museum by philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler – noted for her trenchant views on the Israel-Gaza conflict – had been delayed at the behest of the board. Abse confirmed this, adding that that in common with many institutions it had to respond to pressure from both sides of the debate. 'It is not the business of a museum to promulgate any one view and we have to manage that,' Abse said. She said the museum had been 'caught between a rock and a hard place' on the issue. Other signatories to the letter include the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the novelist and academic Jacqueline Rose, the psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips, Butler, and two former directors of the museum, Carol Seigel and Michael Molnar. Current honorary fellows of the museum who have put their names to the letter include the psychoanalyst and academic Darian Leader – also a former trustee – and the writer Lisa Appignanesi. Orbach is also a honorary fellow. The museum is recruiting a new director after the departure of Giuseppe Albano in May. The Friends group say that 'in this current unhappy climate' the board's governance issues should be addressed before a successor is appointed. A Charity Commission spokesperson said: 'We can confirm that, in line with our guidance, the Freud Museum has filed a serious incident report relating to a dispute with an external group. We are assessing information to determine if there is a role for the commission.'
USA Today
17-07-2025
- Health
- USA Today
America's mental health field is overrun with antisemitism. It's dangerous.
If Zionism is being treated as a mental disorder, how can Jews expect fair treatment? Worse still, this antisemitism is being taught to future clinicians, spreading bias even further. Jewish clinicians 'with Zionist affiliations' are being blacklisted on social media. An emergency room doctor who runs a Facebook group for Physician Moms removed Jews from the group. A doctor and untenured professor at University of California San Francisco Hospital tweeted that the university should investigate whether a new 'Israeli' medical student – known to be a Persian American Jew – committed genocide before coming to USCF. And a professor and the director of counseling at Villanova University taught her students that the 'colonized mind' and Zionism are mental illnesses of the frontal lobe alongside fascism, 'rape culture' and 'genocidal tendencies.' This is what the mental health profession has become for the Jewish community – steeped in antisemitism. At the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, clients have informed our legal advocates of antisemitic incidents that include a Washington, DC-based therapist who refused to see a Jewish patient who had recently moved to the United States from Israel; a psychologist who was doxxed and harassed online because she is a Jewish Zionist; and a major mental health organization denying a Jewish affinity group because its members were 'privileged white supremacists.' Antisemitism has escalated since Hamas terrorist attack Antisemitism has grown rapidly and become mainstream in recent years. From workplaces to all levels of education, discrimination and vitriol have taken hold in many of our institutions. In the health care system, research shows that antisemitism has escalated since the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Now, 75% of Jewish medical professionals say they have experienced antisemitism at work. No form of hatred is acceptable within our mental health care system – one that is supposedly built on empathy, ethics and compassion. The irony is appalling. Jews built much of our psychological and brain science, revolutionizing our understanding of mental processes and developing many of the therapeutic methods used today. Their ranks include Sigmund Freud; child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein; Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl; Alan Beck, the developer of cognitive therapy; and Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavior therapy. The Brandeis Center recently interviewed dozens of Jewish therapists and doctors, and we found that Jewish and Israeli patients and professionals are being ostracized, harassed and protested simply because of their identity. This is the definition of antisemitism, and we cannot let it stand. Those who perpetuated these brazen acts were given minimal (if any) sanctions. And because of the personal nature of the perpetrators' work, it feels like an even deeper violation. What's even more dangerous is when this xenophobic hatred is put into practice under the guise of therapy, as in the case with the new 'Decolonizing Therapy.' Its founder, Dr. Jennifer Mullen, argues that the root of our mental health crisis is separation – 'separation from land, our ancestry, community, and our innate joy' – so the goal of this framework is to challenge the psychological impact of colonialism, historical trauma and systemic oppression. Therapists use Decolonizing Therapy when working with clients who experience intergenerational trauma or issues related to their cultural identity. In practice, however, it promotes antisemitic narratives that stigmatize Jewish patients and providers and refers to Jews as oppressors in therapeutic settings – often on the taxpayers' dime through programs funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Decolonizing Therapy is dangerous and misleading Decolonizing Therapy dangerously and misleadingly identifies Zionism as a root cause of mental illness, despite Zionism's obvious absence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the most comprehensive, internationally accepted manual on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. It also equates Zionism – an integral component of Jewish identity for many Jewish Americans, it the core belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, Israel – with colonialism and oppression. This delegitimizes Jewish historical, cultural, ethnic and cultural connections to Israel, denying the Jewish people's more than 3,000-year history with that land. For obvious reasons, numerous experts, including psychologists and professors, agree that Decolonizing Therapy 'lacks empirical support and rigorous scientific validation.' Instead it puts 'ideology over evidence.' By promoting false ethnic stereotypes founded on a binary worldview that casts Jews as oppressors, Decolonizing Therapy misrepresents Jewish identity and history. This ignorance creates hostile environments for Jewish patients and therapists, alienating them, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and ultimately compromising the integrity of mental health care. If Zionism is being treated as a mental disorder, how can Jews expect fair treatment? Worse still, this antisemitism is being taught to future clinicians, spreading bias even further. In recent years, federal and state lawmakers have resisted taxpayer support for other controversial, polarizing and racially divisive approaches, including what a recent executive order calls 'Discriminatory Equity Ideology' – defined as 'an ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations.' Those states and agencies, including the White House, have ceased to fund other racially divisive ideologies. Why is Decolonizing Therapy any different? The proliferation of antisemitism in any space is horrific. But its proliferation in health care – a sacred, professional space brimming with private and sometimes life-threatening information – is especially dangerous. We cannot allow these antisemitic and discriminatory practices and language to cultivate in our mental health spaces. We must attack this threat from all sides. The federal government must defund Decolonizing Therapy. Mental health professionals and their patients must hold colleagues and providers accountable for their practices and condemn antisemitism in the health space. As human beings, we must all call out antisemitism wherever we see it. We can only eradicate antisemitism when we all get involved. After all, 'do no harm' is not a suggestion. We have to stop treating it as such. Kenneth L. Marcus is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education under two administrations. He is the author of "The Definition of Anti-Semitism."
Times
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Esther Freud — my favourite three books
Esther Freud, 62, was born in London, the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and the great-granddaughter of the psychologist Sigmund Freud. After travelling the world with her mother, she returned to England in 1979, where she trained as an actress, appearing in The Bill and Doctor Who. She later became an author, best known for her 1992 semi-autobiographical novel Hideous Kinky. It recounts her unconventional childhood and was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After writing her second novel, Peerless Flats, she was included in Granta's 1993 list of the best young British novelists. She has since written seven novels, including The Sea House and I Couldn't Love You More, and a play, Stitchers, that ran at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London in 2018. Her latest novel is My Sister and Other Lovers, a sequel to Hideous Kinky. In her 1995 novel The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald tells the story of the young and brilliant Friedrich 'Fritz' von Hardenberg, a master of dialectics and mathematics who becomes the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. Fitzgerald throws us headlong into the world of Leipzig in the 18th century and beguiles us with the wit and delicacy of her storytelling. The novel is surprising, eccentric and moving, and with a humour that is all her own it touches upon the illogicality of love and the irrationality of genius. To me it seemed to show that books are the best place to learn about life — both past and present — and proved how modern a historical novel could be. • 80 best books to take on holiday this summer — chosen by the experts A book that holds more stories than most is Michael Holroyd's A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families (2008). It is a masterwork of biography, unravelling one life after another, illuminating the passions and triumphs of the Victorian stage and, later, the artistic and sexual adventures of the ensuing generations. Holroyd adds layer upon layer to his multi-character tale, full of affection for each of them and the chaotic nature of their lives. The marriages, the affairs and divorces, the children, cherished, abandoned, a great many of them the offspring of Terry's son, the set designer Edward Gordon Craig, one of whose children is born — with tragic consequences — to the dancer Isadora Duncan. This book is as engrossing and fantastical as any novel and reveals the single-minded self-involvement that can sweep up a great artist. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List I have always loved Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys. It's not that Rhys is so very underrated, but her late novel Wide Sargasso Sea has overshadowed her earlier, more autobiographical books. I picked up my copy on a market stall just as I was beginning to write my first novel, and I have kept that copy in my study ever since as a talisman, a mark of what I most want to achieve. Voyage in the Dark (1934) tells the story of Anna, recently arrived from Dominica, working as an actress, touring the chillier, drabber seaside towns of Britain. It is written with spare elegance, the humour of the dialogue exquisite, and we are shown through Anna's dreamy, shivery reflections of West Indian life what this move from home has cost her. It's a story of belonging, of rootlessness, of prejudice, Anna's adventures fuelled by the hope that love might be the one thing that can save her. My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud is out now (Bloomsbury £18.99). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Time Out
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
London is getting a new mini museum all about the Great Fire of London
Whatever niche topic you're into, London probably has a museum for it. There's a museum dedicated to the post office, another one centred around gardening, one all about fans and others that are focused on Sigmund Freud, sewing machines, toys and vaginas. But among all of its weird and wonderful attractions, London still doesn't have a museum dedicated to one of its most well-known and most catastrophic events – the Great Fire of London 1666. That could soon change, though. Plans have been submitted to turn a disused toilet in the City of London into a mini-museum dedicated to the event. The toilet (built in the early 2000s) sits close to the Monument – the landmark that was erected in 1677 to commemorate the blaze – and resembles a glass box. At the moment, there isn't enough space around the Monument to display detailed information about the fire, so the idea is that the new museum will supplement that. Eastern City BID is the organisation behind the proposal, although its the City of London Corporation that actually owns the property. According to the plans, the new 'micro-museum' would house 'interpretive material, displays, and digital content' that'll tell the story of the Monument and the Great Fire. Proposed designs show colourful graphics all over the exterior of the building, but none of the designs are fully set in stone yet. At this stage, the priority is to get planning permission for change of use, then the concept can be developed properly. The planning document reads: 'The proposal will transform the existing space into a micro museum for the Monument to the Great Fire of London. It offers a great opportunity to provide a publicly accessible cultural space with unique historic interpretation of the Monument and it's [sic] many layered stories. Big stories told, in a tiny space!' The 25 best museums in London.
