You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to understand that ornaments can become symbols of emotion. But now research into a curious decorative object that Freud himself once cherished has shed fresh light on the darker corners of his own psyche. A tiny Chinese screen, made of jade and placed in the centre of his consulting desk, was one of only two items salvaged from his former apartment in Vienna in 1938. The intricate ornament, which still stands in position in his last home in Hampstead, north London, is not particularly valuable and had no obvious connection to the life of the founding father of psychoanalysis. Yet it was deliberately smuggled out of his apartment by a close friend when the Nazis threatened to confiscate the large collection of artefacts and antiques Freud had left behind in Austria. The significance of the jade screen has puzzled historians of his work ever since. Now, curators of an exhibition that opens next month inside his London house are to present the screen as the key to unlocking Freud’s fascination with China in the last years of his life. Made from pierced jade and wood, it was designed for a scholar’s desk and depicts the Chinese character of “shou”, meaning “long life”. To a Daoist mind, the accompanying flower decoration was an aid to the contemplation of the simplicity of the natural world. Yet for Freud it held another significance. “Freud seems to have used the screen as a reminder of the unknown,” said curator Professor Craig Clunas, an expert on Chinese culture. “For him, the Orient was like the dark area of hidden significance in the human mind. There is also a strong argument that he associated it with the psychology of women, something he regarded as a shifting and mysterious thing.” The jade screen was directly in front of Freud as he worked and consulted with patients and Clunas believes it represented all that Freud felt his theories could not explain. At that time the shadowy world of an imagined “Orient” to the east was widely set in contrast to the western tradition of logical thought and classical culture. So, while Freud studied both Greek and Roman philosophy in depth, Clunas notes that he avoided serious research into Chinese customs and schools of thinking. Instead, Freud used Chinese artefacts as potent emblems of mystery. “Freud’s little understood interest in China is something that came to him in his last decade, so it was very fresh in his mind at the end,” said Clunas, a professor emeritus of the history of art at the University of Oxford, where he was a specialist in China until 2018. “Before then, Freud had collected other things, especially items from the classical world. He was usually a voracious reader, but it seems as if he chose to leave China as an area of the unknown.” Freud came to London as a refugee with his adult daughter Anna, the pioneering child psychoanalyst, when they escaped the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938. The pair set up house together in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, where Freud saw patients in the study that would also be the scene of his death from cancer a year later. Freud and China, the exhibition opening on 12 February at the Freud Museum, will be the first to look at this element of Freud’s life and to examine the Chinese objects he began to collect, often positioning them in the eyeline of his patients as they lay on his famous couch. “The beautiful little jade ornament was clearly treasured by Freud and a significant object for him. Our exhibition will attempt to work out why,” said Carol Seigel, director of the Freud Museum. As the second world war approached, Freud had been forced to select a couple of objects to be brought to England from Vienna, asking his well-connected friend Marie Bonaparte to take them secretly from his apartment. “She put the jade screen and a small Greek bronze inside her handbag so they would not be spotted by the stormtroopers waiting outside,” said Clunas. “The bronze dates from the beginning of Freud’s collecting career and the screen from his new interest in China. Maybe this is why they were both chosen.” Freud used the Chinese language as an analogy in his influential writing on interpreting dreams, but as Clunas points out, this was based on a common misunderstanding. “He picked up on the idea that the Chinese language system has a certain vagueness and relies on context for meaning. “This is not quite right and later the Chinese interpreter of his autobiography queried the suggestion and asked where Freud had sourced it. He said he had taken it from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.” Freud’s enthusiasm for collecting artefacts followed the death of his father and academics have seen this as an emotional reaction to mourning. His later interest in China followed his mother’s death and so, at one level, it does seem to be attached to gender, suggests Clunas. The psychoanalyst also had a fondness for chows, dogs linked with China in the western imagination. Jofi, his favourite, was by Freud’s side while he saw patients and Freud’s dog Lun was brought with the family to London after they left Vienna. Lun’s release after six months of quarantine was celebrated across the British media.