Freud Museum hosts controversial pro-Palestine campaigner at communist mental health event
The Freud Museum has been criticised for hosting a communist mental health event for controversial pro-Palestine campaigners, defying calls to cancel the event.
Once home to the Jewish father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, the site in north London hosted an event devised by Red Clinic, a “collective of communist mental health workers”.
The event included academic Lara Sheehi, who now teaches in Qatar after leaving a US university following student complaints and an investigation into unproven allegations of anti-Semitism in her classes.
The follower of “trans-inclusive feminist and liberation theory” has described the Oct 7 Hamas attacks on Israel attacks as a “horrifying liberation”.
The UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote to the Freud museum demanding that the event involving Ms Sheehi and her husband and fellow activist be shut down.
Caroline Turner, the director of UKLFI, said: “We are disappointed that the Freud Museum gave a platform to such an extremist speaker, whose vitriolic hatred of the only Jewish state is displayed in her social media postings.
“The Museum implied that they didn’t cancel the event because they were afraid to breach their contract. However, they have upset many psychoanalysts and others by hosting the event.
“Unfortunately, the Freud Museum has been exploited and hijacked for the use of a terrorist sympathiser and apologist and the excellent name and reputation of the Freud Museum has been sullied.”
A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Lara Sheehi is clearly an inflammatory figure.
“She has been accused of harassing Jewish students at George Washington University, where she used to work, and has allegedly shared content online that justifies the brutal attacks carried out by Hamas on 7th October, an anti-Semitic genocidal terror group.
“How are London’s Jewish community supposed to feel safe, when such an individual has been invited to speak at an event on their doorstop?
“We have seen our urban centres become no-go zones for our Jewish community every weekend. Inviting Ms Sheehi to speak at such a time, even after being made aware of her record, is tone-deaf.”
Liberation is not ‘bubbles and unicorns’
UKLI had warned that Ms Sheehi was embroiled in controversy while teaching at George Washington University, where students alleged lectures contained “anti-Semitic discrimination”.
The university found no evidence of this in 2023 but the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights reportedly began looking into student concerns, according to a campaign group. In January 2024 Mr Sheehi left to take up a post in Qatar.
Also cause for concern for UKLFI is a video from October 2023, in which Ms Sheehi says that in relation to the Oct 7 Hamas attacks, Left-wing activists need to “rid ourselves of the romantic notion of what uprisings look like”.
She added that “the conditions that created this are violent, what did you imagine would happen?”, arguing that “liberation” is not “bubbles and unicorns” and pro-Palestinians need to accept how “horrifying liberation can be”.
In the same video her husband Stephen Sheehi, who also attended the event, said: “Palestinians are not allowed to be happy that they broke out of jail,” in reference to claims that Palestinian deaths are justified by the West.
The married couple are both psychoanalysts who have branded Israel an “apartheid” and a “settler colonialist” state, and co-authored the book Psychoanalysis Under Occupation.
The event was organised by Red Clinic, the communist mental health collective, which aims to “develop a novel theoretical basis for psychotherapy today, informed by Marxist, anti-racist, queer feminist, indigenous, decolonial and radical disability theories”.
UKLFI raised concerns that the Freud museum hosting the couple would cause reputational damage, and called on Giuseppe Albano, its director, and Sue Prevezer KC, the board’s chairman, to put a stop to the event.
It is understood that the museum responded, saying that it has no connection to the event, which was not advertised on its website. Red Clinic is one of many unaffiliated groups which rent space from the museum.
It is understood that a trustee alerted the museum’s leadership to the event, but that there were no legal grounds to cancel it.
The museum is the converted house in which the Austrian Freud spent the final year of his life while in exile in London, having fled the Nazis. Its president is his great-great grandson, Lord Freud.
Ms Sheehi was approached for comment.
