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Bronze Height: 9.4 cm 
Bronze vessels of this type are not uncommon in Etruscan tombs of the
3rd century BC. Their use is uncertain: some may have been employed
to perfume the air, since they are often fitted with chains for
suspension; others may simply have held cosmetics. They take the form
either of a single head, usually female, or of two heads set back to
back, most popularly a satyr and a maenad (male and female followers
of Dionysus, god of wine) as here. The attraction of this arrangement
perhaps lay in its juxtaposition of opposites ugly and beautiful, male
and female. Dualism runs throughout Freud's thinking, appearing in
such profound dichotomies as the pleasure principle versus the
reality principle, Eros versus Thanatos, and libido versus aggression,
and in Freud's notion of the dream mechanism of reversal the
representation of an idea by its opposite. Likewise, and central to
this object, is the notion of the basic bisexuality of all human
beings, which Freud discussed in his fundamental work, `Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality', of 1905 (SE, 7, pp. 135-243).
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