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CORVALLIS - Michael Roth, curator of a major 1998 exhibit on Sigmund Freud at the Library of Congress, will give a free public lecture at Oregon State University on Thursday, Dec. 2.

His lecture, which will focus on the politics of psychoanalysis and the controversy generated by the exhibit, will begin at 4 p.m. in OSU's Memorial Union Room 206. It is part of the Horning Lecture Series at OSU, which has the theme in 1999-2000, "Scien ce and Politics Past and Present."

Roth is the associate director of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. A renowned historian and critic, he has published widely on the history of European thought and culture, on the Holocaust, and on the arts.

Among his books are "Psycho-Analysis as History: Negation and Freedom in Freud" and "The Ironist's Cage: Trauma, Memory and the Construction of History."

In his lecture, Roth will look at how Freud and the theories and practices of psychoanalysis have been in dispute since the beginning of the 20th century. Society's modern notions of identity, memory, childhood and sexuality have been shaped in arguments both supporting and attacking Freud and his legacy, Roth says.

Roth, who has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, has taught at Princeton, Scripps College, and Claremont Graduate School.