IN MEMORIAM ANNA FREUD
“These ‘eyes’ speak to the necessity to pause, to reflect, to turn to oneself and look at the world guided by one’s own feeling” – and this is why these “windows to the soul” are at the center of the installation EYES | OCHI, which was created in a small village near the city of Lviv in 2016.
There, in a space called “Prostir RaDity” (“Room of Children’s Joy”), numerous children find board and shelter during the weeks of summer, which gives them a chance to face up to the traumatic ramifications of the war in Ukraine. Founded in 2015, following the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in the Donbas, it has become a fixture and a point of reflection. “Prostir RaDity” is supervised by psychotherapists, artists, musicians, philosophers and other to address the external and internal injuries and dangers of war.
In the photo installation EYES | OCHI in the Showroom Berggasse 19, we are confronted with a richly layered kaleidoscope of children’s gazes, and with their struggle for a better future. During World War II, Anna Freud, child analyst and youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud, also addressed the question of coping strategies after the experience of war – of how much states of anxiety and particularly the loss of (psychological) parents affect children’s psyches. October 9, 2022, is the 40th anniversary of her death, which is why the Sigmund Freud Museum dedicates the presentation of EYES | OCHI to her memory and to her important work Young children in war-time: a year’s work in a residential war nursery (first published in 1942).

Sigmund Freud Museum
Wien IX, Berggasse 19. An dieser Adresse lebte und arbeitete Sigmund Freud 47 Jahre, ehe er 1938 vor den Nationalsozialisten fliehen musste. Seit 1971 befindet sich hier das Sigmund Freud Museum, das 2020 nach umfassender Sanierung und Erweiterung neueröffnet wurde. Drei Dauerausstellungen in den ehemaligen Wohn- und Ordinationsräumen Freuds, eine Kunstpräsentation im Schauraum Berggasse 19 sowie Sonderausstellungen vermitteln Freuds vielschichtiges kulturelles Erbe: Sie sind seinem Leben und Werk gewidmet, der Entwicklung der Psychoanalyse in Theorie und Praxis und ihrer Bedeutung für die Bereiche Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Kunst. Auch die Geschichte des Hauses Berggasse 19 sowie die bewegten Schicksale seiner Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner werden ins Blickfeld gerückt.
EYES | OCHI
9 Oct 2022 - 15 Oct 2023
Sigmund Freud Museum, Berggasse, Wien, Österreich
Eyes of a child of "Prostir RaDity“, detail of installation, photo: Oliver Ottenschlaeger