Negotiations of surface: archaeology within the early strata of psychoanalysis.

Freud's "The Aetiology of Hysteria" (1896) begins with the description of an excavation. With this passage as a point of departure, the role of archaeology in Freud's early psychoanalytic formulations is examined. The archaeological imagery in his later writings and the collection of ancient objects that came to fill his consulting room and library are well known, but the passage must be contextualized in its own moment to show the influences that led Freud to articulate an "expanse of ruins" at this particular time.