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.
Freud Papers, Films, Photographs, and Audiotapes
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's Moving Image Research 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, with interview transcripts included in the Sigmund Freud Papers.
The entire contents of the Sigmund Freud Papers, Films, Photographs, and interviews 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 and the digital Freud Films and Photographs, all of which are available at the Library of Congress website. Digitized audio recordings of interviews that founding Executive Director Kurt R. Eissler conducted with Freud's family, friends, colleagues, and patients will soon be added to those digital collections.
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, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, with the support of The Polonsky Foundation (a U.K. cultural heritage nonprofit) and with the assistance of the Sigmund Freud Archives, completed the digitization of nearly half the collection, including all of Freud's own writings, correspondence, and records.
In 2018, the Moving Image Research Center of the Library of Congress placed the Freud family films online.
The digitized Freud Papers includes transcripts of hundreds of interviews with and recollections by Freud's family, friends, patients, and associates. The Recorded Sound Section in the Library of Congress has preserved the original audio recordings of Kurt R. Eissler's interviews. In 2021, the Sigmund Freud Archives, with the support of the New-Land Foundation, completed the digitization of the audio of all the interview tapes. The lab work was undertaken by George Blood, L.P. Currently, the Library of Congress is organizing and cataloguing the extensive audio files. The digitized audio of the Eissler interviews will soon be available to users.
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, Senior Archives Specialist, Library of Congress; Claire Lober, Assistant to the Executive Director, Sigmund Freud Archives; and Ian Clarke, Clarke Computer Systems, Inc., for their contributions to the creation of this website.