The Sigmund Freud Archives, Inc. is an independent, non-profit organization. The mission of the Archives is to advance the study of Sigmund Freud's life, career, and ideas, and to promote research into the development of psychoanalysis and the history of science and culture during Freud's lifetime.
Founded in 1951, the Sigmund Freud Archives has assembled and preserved the largest and most wide-ranging collections of manuscripts, papers, correspondence, and biographical materials from Sigmund Freud's life and work, and has made them accessible to readers and researchers worldwide. The collections include manuscript drafts and notes, personal, family, and general correspondence, films and photographs, professional writings and notebooks, and memorabilia and records related both to Freud's biography and to the history of psychoanalysis. They contain audiotaped interviews with Freud's family, friends, colleagues, and patients, together with transcripts of those interviews. The collections are housed at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Sigmund Freud Archives and the Library of Congress
At the time of its founding in 1951, the Sigmund Freud Archives contracted with the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., for the Library to become the depository, cataloguer, and conservator of the writings, documents, and artifacts assembled by the Archives. Across decades of work by both the Sigmund Freud Archives and the Library of Congress, the Freud collection of papers, films, photographs, interviews, and related materials has grown to approximately 50,000 items.
The Freud Papers comprise the core of more than one hundred other collections relating to Sigmund Freud and the history of psychoanalysis assembled by the Library of Congress. These collections include the Anna Freud Papers, as well as the papers of other eminent psychoanalysts and members of the Freud family.
Sigmund Freud Papers, Films, Photographs, and Audio Recordings
The Sigmund Freud collections are currently organized according to papers, films, photographs, and audiotapes. The Sigmund Freud Papers are housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Sigmund Freud films are conserved in the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Sigmund Freud photographs are located in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. The audiotapes of the interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and patients are preserved in the Recorded Sound Section of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, with interview transcripts included in the Sigmund Freud Papers.
The entire contents of the Sigmund Freud Papers, films, photographs, and audio recordings are open to the public, with the exception of records or information still subject to restrictions placed upon them by donors or their estates. All documents are released unaltered except in instances when patients' names have been deleted to preserve anonymity and confidentiality.
The Sigmund Freud Archives works in close cooperation with the Library of Congress to preserve the Freud collections and to create ever-widening accessibility, most recently through the process of digitization. The digitized Freud collections include the digital Freud Papers, the digitized Freud films and photographs, and the digitized audiotapes of interviews that the Archives' Founding Executive Director Kurt R. Eissler conducted with Freud's family, associates, and patients. All of the digital collections are available at the Library of Congress website.
Three successive Executive Directors of the Sigmund Freud Archives-Harold P. Blum, Anton O. Kris, and Louis Rose-were early proponents of making the Freud Papers available online. In 2017, with the support of The Polonsky Foundation (a U.K. cultural heritage nonprofit) and with the assistance of the Sigmund Freud Archives, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress completed the digitization of thousands of documents, artifacts, and pages in the Freud Papers. The digital Freud Papers on the Library of Congress website includes Freud's manuscripts, correspondence, and records; transcripts of Kurt R. Eissler's interviews; and written recollections assembled by Eissler.
In 2018, the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress placed the Freud family films online.
The Recorded Sound Section of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center is the depository of the original audiotapes of all of the Eissler interviews. In 2021, the Sigmund Freud Archives, with the support of the New-Land Foundation, completed the digitization of those recordings. George Blood LP carried out the technical engineering. In 2023, the Recorded Sound Section completed the transfer of the digitized audiotapes to the Library of Congress website. The audio available on the website contains not only all the many interviews for which Eissler prepared written transcripts, but also the audio of several interviews without transcripts. The digitized recordings can be listened to on site at the Library of Congress or through the Library of Congress website.
Jennifer Stuart, Ph.D. – President
Nellie L. Thompson, Ph.D. – Secretary
W. Craig Tomlinson, Ph.D. – Treasurer
Sarah G. Ackerman, Ph.D.
Harold P. Blum, M.D., Executive Director, Emeritus
Lawrence D. Blum, M.D.
George Gross, M.D.
Ilse Grubrich-Simitis
Samuel Herschkowitz, M.D.
Nathan M. Kravis, M.D.
Peter J. Loewenberg, Ph.D.
Henry Nunberg, M.D.
Robert A. Paul, Ph.D.
Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D.
John M. Ross, Ph.D.
The Sigmund Freud Archives thanks Margaret McAleer; Claire Lober; and Ian Clarke, Clarke Computer Systems, Inc., for their contributions to the creation of this website.