Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Everyday Life

For many people Hypodermic syringes like this one are invested with an ‘uncanny’ feeling.

• Hypodermic syringe, 2 ml, by Johnson’s Ethical Plastics Ltd

Melanie Klein (1882–1960), a pioneer of child analysis, recognised the importance of spontaneous play in children as a form of free association and made it a tool of analytical practice.

• Toys

Selection of toys, ‘The world pictures for children’ from the collection of psychotherapist Margaret Lowenfeld, 1929–1970s.

• Lowenfeld toys – zoo sign and tree scene

Half a lion and half a woman, the Sphinx is linked to the myth of Oedipus.

• Sphinx

Margaret Lowenfeld, a pioneering child psychologist, used these toys as part of her ‘world technique’, to help troubled children express their emotions.

• ‘World’ created from toys in a tray of sand

In painting and film, gloves traditionally function as symbols of power and sex.

• Gloves

This pot is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Shadow, a sinister story of a man whose shadow first leaves him and then returns to haunt him.

• In Praise of Shadows by Grayson Perry