On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud (MIT Press) Hardcover – September 1, 2017 by Nathan Kravis (The MIT Press)

At the heart of this book is a symbol -- Freud's own psychoanalytic couch -- one of the iconic images of the 20th Century. Freud himself said he adopted the couch for psychoanalysis because he couldn't stand to be stared at by his patients all day. But the truth, as Dr Nathan Kravis makes indelibly clear in this unique book, goes far deeper. In true psychoanalytic fashion, the symbol of the couch obscures as much as it reveals.

One of a psychoanalyst's key capacities is to notice unexpected details. Here the key details are not verbal, but visual: the actual physical appearance of the couch itself. Freud's own couch, Kravis points out, was an oriental-style divan -- an item of furniture whose history goes back a few centuries in Europe, and in some ways even further to classical Greece and Rome.

In its original Freudian embodiment, the couch was decidedly more sensual. And psychoanalysis itself was originally a step-child of clinical hypnosis, a practice with decidedly erotic overtones. As Kravis writes, "the couch -- and recumbent speech itself -- resonates with a culturally rich and intriguingly ambiguous interplay of traditions of luxury, healing, intimacy, and erotic freedom." ("Pillow-talk," if you will). The point is driven home by a remarkable series of images of naked or semi-naked bodies lying on luxurious couches -- from ancient Rome, to Titian, Ingres, David, Boucher, Renior, Sargent, Manet, 19th Century photographers, Henri Rousseau, and Picasso.

On the Couch is as beautiful as any living-room-table guidebook to an exhibit at the Met. Working together with distinguished picture editor Leora Kahn, Kravis has put together a breathtaking collection of images that clearly situates Freud's couch within a visual tradition of the erotic.

Confronted with this astonishing series of images, it's hard not to wonder that no one thought to connect these dots to Freud, until Dr Kravis. But that's the case with all great insights, of course: In retrospect, they seem obvious.

Let's not forget that to the early 20th Century mind, "Freudianism" meant only one thing: that everything -- towers, forests, cigars -- was connected to sex. In its early days, psychoanalysis attracted more than its share of bohemian spirits. What became of this clearly sensuous ritual as the 20th Century proceeded, was that the design of psychoanalytic couches became decidedly more austere -- as if to deny the original sensual impulse behind psychoanalysis itself. Practitioners seemed to be more uneasy with the harem-like eroticism embodied by Freud's original couch.

Kravis rightly points out the original eroticism of the psychoanalytic procedure -- and connects the couch with other currents in Western culture as well. The result is a tour-de-force of historical scholarship, brilliantly argued. I only wish it could reach a broader intellectual audience. Its use of technical language (such as "analysand" for "patient on the couch"), while conventional in psychoanalytic writing, limits the degree to which the book will be understood by lay readers. I hope the author will choose to adapt this work so it can be more widely read!