EGO SELF IDENTITY - WHAT ABOUT THE AUSTRIANS

This picture tells a story, like most things associated with Sigmund Freud. It is the sign in Vienna in the Berggasse indicating where the museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud is located. Berggasse can be translated as Mountain Alley. The sign is like the tip of an iceberg.

But first:

The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna is a museum founded in 1971 covering the Sigmund Freud’s 's life story. It is located in the Alsegrund district, at Berggasse 19. In 2003 the museum was put in the hands of the newly-established Sigmund Freud Foundation, which has since received the entire building as an endowment. It also covers the history of psychoanalysis.

The building was newly built in 1891 when Freud moved there. The previous building on the site, once the home of Victor Adler, had been torn down.

His old rooms, where he lived for 47 years and produced the majority of his writings, now house a documentary centre to his life and works. The influence of psychoanalysis on art and society is displayed through a program of special exhibitions and a modern art collection.

The museum consists of Freud's former practice and a part of his old private quarters. Attached to the museum are Europe's largest psychoanalytic research library, with 35,000 volumes, and the research institute of the Sigmund Freud Foundation.

Freud Museum Příbor 

The display includes original items owned by Freud, the practice's waiting room, and parts of Freud's extensive antique collection. However his famous couch is now in the Freud Museum in London, along with most of the original furnishings, as Freud was able to take his furniture with him when he emigrated. A third Freud Museum, after London and Vienna, was started in the Czech town of Příbor in 2006 when the house of his birth was opened to the public.

The museum contains an archive of images containing around two thousand documents, mostly photographs, but also paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The collection consists of almost all of the existing photos of Sigmund Freud and his family, a large number of photos of Anna Freud and photos from psychoanalytic congresses etc.

Freud Museum London

In 1938 Freud was forced to leave German-annexed Austria due to his Jewish ancestry, and fled to London. The museum was opened in 1971 by the Sigmund Freud Society in the presence of Anna Freud. In 1996 the building was expanded with new rooms for special exhibitions and events. The Foundation has ongoing plans to expand the museum.

Since 1970 the annual Sigmund Freud Lecture has taken place in Vienna on Freud's birthday, 6 May. This event, at which psychoanalysts speak on a contemporary theme, was established by the Sigmund Freud Society and is now organised by the Foundation.

The thing about the sign is that it requires one to incline one’s head slightly to the left to read it. This is the case from either side. It is mounted on a sturdy steel pole shaped like a tuning fork. The letters are in Franklin Gothic, white on a red background. Franklin Gothic and its related faces are realist sans-serif typefaces originated by Morris Fuller Benton (1872–1948) in 1902. “Gothic” is an increasingly archaic term meaning sans-serif. Franklin Gothic has been used in many advertisements and headlines in newspapers. The typeface continues to maintain a high profile, appearing in a variety of media from books to billboards. Despite a period of eclipse in the 1930s, after the introduction of European faces like Kabel and Futura, they were re-discovered by American designers in the 1940s and have remained popular ever since.

The sign gives every indication of being a very solid modern structure.  It stands out and, rather like a drawing pin on a map to indicate a specific site, it is pinned into the pavement.

It is a very specific structure. It seems to indicate, that despite the history of anti-Semitism , Anschluss and National Socialism, this is where the great man first made his mark. This is where the history of psychoanalysis begins, right here in the city of Vienna on the Berggasse, and we ask you to tilt your head in recognition of that. There is a great deal of overcompensating going on here.  So what does this say about the Austrians?

In my research, I found another interesting little conundrum.  If one looks at Google map and expands the map to include Europe, by dragging the little man in the top left hand corner to place it on the map to obtain a street view, one finds that a street view in Austria is not available, and very few places in Germany have the facility of a street view. In Austria, the only “street view” is inside a couple of Museums in Vienna, the Neue Berg Museum, the Schatzkammer and the Kunshistorisches Museum.

What would Freud have made of this? Do the Austrians have something to hide? Has the effect of National Socialism so scarred them that they are wary of the slightest of photographic intrusions on their lives?

Whether or not these musings have any significance, I can only repeat that the sign is but the tip of an iceberg, an iceberg as designed by Freud. 

MORE STUFF TO LOOK OUT FOR

Why is it that one’s ignorance expands so dramatically the more one tries to fill the void - that lack of knowledge?  Why is it that I am just discovering the FEPE, Federation European Publicite Exterieur and its founder Jacques Dauphin.

Jacques Dauphin (July 4, 1923 - April 1, 1994) was a French advertising pioneer founder and CEO of Dauphin OTA. He is best known as the inventor of painted walls and billboards as new advertising mediums.

In 1999 Dauphin OTA was sold to the American company Clear Channel and became an emblematic part of its outdoor communication division

After graduating with a law degree from Faculte de droit de Paris and from HEC Paris, Jacques Dauphin re-opened the Parisian-based office created by his father Eugene Dauphin in 1921 who closed it during WWII to prevent any collaboration with the Nazis. He then developed the company to a broader scale after the French Liberation expanding its activities to other European countries including the UK, Belgium, Italy or Spain

His professional achievements have been honoured in several occasions and he has successively occupied the following positions: president (1958 - 1966) of the national outdoor advertising federations of France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands best known as FEPE that he created and the International Advertising Association. He was then vice-president (1969), president (1972 - 1974), and honorary president of the French Chambers of advertising. He presided the 3rd World Congress of Outdoor Advertising in London in 1972. He was a member of the International Commission « Publicité distribution » of the International Chamber of Commerce, and co-president of Grand prix international de l´affichage. He has been made Knight of the Legion of Honour and Knight of the Ordres des Arts et des Lettres by the French authorities

Through Dauphin OTA Jacques Dauphin was also particularly active in the promotion of the arts and image. He notably promoted the Cannes Film Festival and the French International Contemporary Art Fair best known as FIAC.

In respect of my further research, there is the European Sign Expo taking place in Munich from the 20^th to 23^rd May 2014 and the 55^th FEPE Conference to be held in Vienna in 2014.

More of this anon and in the meantime:

SIGNS ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE

UNDERTAKING THE RESEARCH PROJECT

On the 25^th March 2013 I submitted an expression of interest in researching a PhD at the University of Falmouth. I was invited to submit a preliminary proposal on the 17^th April, which I submitted on the 28^th May. On the 12^th June I was informed that I was being invited for an interview, which took place on the 24^th June. This involved a 10 minute power point presentation followed by 20 minutes of questions. This culminated in an offer of study on the 2^nd July 2013. A three-month process for a three-year undertaking - perhaps undertaking is the operative word, this could be my undertaking. And as my project is concerned with signs I note that ‘undertaker’ as signifying a person who undertakes the preparation of the dead for burial or other means of dealing with the deceased, begins in about 1698. There are also a number of interesting signs to explore:

 

And then there's this:

WHAT PHD?

Much to my surprise I have been offered a place at Falmouth University to do the PhD I have been fussing over about Writing Identity. The next three years of life have now to be planned. Much as I would like to think my initial proposal is a route map towards the completion of this task, a holzweg if you will, it is not quite as easy as clicking the Get Directions button on Google Maps. Would that it were.  So what next? Suddenly the mind is a blank. It is full of woods and trees and I must see clearly now.

Herewith a view from the Guardian on 12 September 2012 by Daniel K. Sokol PhD honorary senior lecturer in medical ethics at Imperial college and director of Alpha Academic Appeals:

Dr. Sokol

Enthusiasm fills the heart of most prospective PhD students, but this enthusiasm can soon fade. The drop-out rate for PhDs is high. In the United States, only 57% of PhD students obtained their PhD 10 years after enrolment. In the humanities, the figure dropped to 49%. In my department, four of us enrolled on the PhD programme in medical ethics; two completed it. Contrary to popular belief, a PhD is not intellectually difficult but it calls for discipline and stamina.

A PhD, especially in the humanities, is a lonely affair. Days are spent alone in front of a computer. Antidotes to the common ailments known as PhD fatigue and PhD blues are, first, choosing a subject that can sustain interest for several years. Often students realise after a few months that their topic is not as gripping as initially believed. An additional consideration, when selecting a topic, is whether the choice will bolster an academic career. Some topics lie on the fringes of the field and may raise eyebrows in reviewers of articles and conference abstracts and in interviews for lectureships. An obscure PhD is also poor preparation for teaching a broad curriculum to undergraduate students.

The second antidote is choosing good supervisors. Knowledge aside, a good supervisor should be willing to devote time to the thesis. Beware the elusive professor, however stellar his or her reputation. It is worth talking to a supervisor's past or current PhD students before making your request.

Sadly, stories of disastrous PhD experiences abound. Unsupportive or bullying supervisors, lack of institutional support, late or radical changes of topic, poor advice, unfair viva voce examinations – the list of potential woes is long. So common are such problems that, after representing an aggrieved PhD student at an appeals hearing, I founded a service to help university students appeal unfair decisions. A frequent fault of students is allowing problems to grow rather than nipping them at the bud; early intervention is key.

When I ask eager students their reasons for enrolling in a PhD programme, I do not seek to dissuade them. My own PhD experience, and those of countless others, was positive. Meetings with my supervisors were regular and enjoyable. The viva (or oral examination), which lasted three hours, went smoothly. Although academic jobs were scarce, I was lucky to obtain a lectureship immediately after the PhD. My thesis may even have contributed, microscopically, to the field.

Too often, however, starry-eyed students rush into a PhD program with scant knowledge of what it entails or how useful it will be in the future. The drop-out rate would be reduced, and much misery avoided, if prospective students possessed a more balanced view of the challenges, as well as the joys, of the PhD.