Desire on the Couch, an Archive Reexamining Sexuality

Desire On The Couch, presented by CIIS' Department of Research Psychology in collaboration with The Kinsey Institute.

Desire on the Couch is a groundbreaking exhibition at CIIS that reexamines a century of debates over sexuality, desire, and identity—bringing rarely seen archival materials and unheard stories into public view.

January 30, 2026

San Francisco, CA—For more than a century, LGBTQ+ people have fought to control their own stories: battling against diagnoses that labeled them as ill, resisting institutions that claimed authority over their identities, and transforming the way we understand sexuality and gender. These struggles weren’t just political. They were deeply psychological battles over who gets to define desire, health, and what it means to live authentically. Now, a groundbreaking exhibition brings this hidden history to light.

Desire on the Couch is a provocative new exhibition coming to San Francisco that traces a century-long struggle over how sexuality is measured, medicalized, and manifested. Making its debut on January 28 at California Institute of Integral Studies’ (CIIS) Desai | Matta Gallery in collaboration with Indiana University’s renowned Kinsey Institute, visitors are invited to explore rarely-seen letters, photographs, and archival materials that reveal how ideas about sexuality and desire have long been argued over, resisted, and reimagined.

“This exhibition is inviting not only the psychoanalytic community, but also the broader public to slow down and remember where our core questions began,” said CIIS Chair of Research Psychology Dr. Christopher Walling. “Sexual knowledge production is an important topic to explore because the way in which we study and discuss identity can either aid in healing or worsen trauma.”

Bridging psychology and culture, Desire on the Couch documents the journey toward modern understandings of sexuality across milestone periods such as the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to the gay liberation movement and Stonewall Riots. In doing so, it offers both historical perspectives and contemporary insights.

"This exhibition encourages people to think outside of our own disciplines, to be creative with how we consider knowledge production, and to be in service of bettering the whole rather than a select few," says Kinsey Institute Curator Rebecca Fasman. "The preservation of material culture is so important. Culture is often the measure of how free we truly are in a society and shows us the undeniable complexity of human existence."

Specifically, the exhibition shares unheard stories from the practitioners, researchers, artists, and communities shaping how people viewed, understood, and classified sexual identity. Freud’s private correspondence to a concerned mother, artwork from George Platt Lynes and Andrey Avinoff, personal letters from Bay Area transgender activist Louise Lawrence, vintage news clippings, and historical statements from medical institutions and academics are among the works on display from the Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections.

Viewings of Desire on the Couch begin during the American Psychoanalytic Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco (January 28-30) with guided tours led by exhibition curators and conversations with scholars. The exhibition is open to the public with tickets for self-guided viewing available through March 14.

On March 12, CIIS will host a conversation event between Dr. Walling and Dr. Justin Garcia, Executive Director of the Kinsey Institute, on Dr. Garcia’s book The Intimate Animal, a scientific exploration of modern love, sex, and relationships.

About the Department of Research Psychology at CIIS

Now entering its second decade, the Department of Research Psychology offers nationally distinctive doctoral training in Somatic Psychology and Integral Transpersonal Psychology. The program emphasizes rigorous research methods, scientific depth, and public scholarship, grounded in CIIS’ mission to educate the whole person — mind, body, and spirit — in the pursuit of realizing human potential.

About the Kinsey Institute

The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University is the world's premier research institute on human sexuality and relationships and a trusted source for evidence-based information. With multiple research centers, global collaborations, and the largest historical archive on sexuality, the Kinsey Institute is where experts turn to understand sex and relationships. Visit kinseyinstitute.org to learn more.