In her warm, intuitive knowledge

The video titled "In Her Warm Intuitive Knowledge: Confrontations with Helena Deutsch" refers to a quote from her book, "The Psychology of Women", published in 1944. Helene Deutsch was one of the first female psychoanalysts and a close collaborator of Sigmund Freud. Forced to emigrate from Vienna to the United States due to Nazi policies, she helped popularize psychoanalysis abroad and became a respected authority in the field.

Helene Deutsch, born Rosenbach, came from a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in Przemyśl, which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of the former Polish state divided among three empires. Not accepting the gender restrictions imposed on her, she rebelled and ran away from home, ultimately managing to persuade her parents to let her study in Vienna. Although she wanted to study law like her father, women were not yet permitted to do so. Consequently, she chose medicine but actively protested against the discrimination faced by women in education, participating in pickets in front of the law faculty. Her dedication to equal rights and social justice was supported by Herman Lieberman, a socialist from Przemyśl with whom she was in a relationship in that time.

Despite Deutsch's significant scientific contributions and her progressive attitude toward life, she has faced criticism from feminist psychoanalysts for not rejecting essential aspects of Freudian theory, including the concepts of the castration complex and female passivity. However, her writings are currently being revisited, particularly by Lena Magnone, who highlights that although Deutsch bases her conclusions on Freudian theory, her work contains many original thoughts and often challenges her mentor.

The decision to use video material from the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna as visual content for an artistic commentary on Helene Deutsch was based on this context. The interior of the museum, a former apartment of Freud, was divided into private and professional spaces. These rooms served me as a "container" filled with quotes from Helene Deutsch's book, along with comments and opinions about her from others.

The video was shot using a mobile phone, which allows for a more discreet filming experience compared to a larger camera. This choice also enabled the use of a vertical frame, which was utilized to create a visual composition with the text. The "empty" black spaces in the video play an essential role; when the image occupies only part of the screen, it gives the impression that we do not see the whole picture. In the Freud Museum, I mainly filmed transitional spaces—such as doors, corridors, mirrors, and reflections—that either reveal or obscure something and open up new perspectives.