Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

Ken Robinson: Who is it that can tell me who I am?': King Lear and The Last Laugh This paper considers the failure to mourn the loss of role and identity in retirement and redundancy, using the examples of King Lear and W. F. Murnau’s silent film The Last Laugh (1924). Ken Robinsonis a psychoanalyst in private practice in Newcastle upon Tyne, a Member and former Honorary Archivist of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at Northumbria University. He is a training analyst for child and adolescent and adult psychotherapy in the North of England and lectures, teaches and supervises in the UK and Europe. Before training as a psychoanalyst he taught English Literature and the History of Ideas in University and maintains an interest in the overlap between psychoanalysis, the arts and humanities. He is especially interested in the nature of therapeutic action, trauma, and creativity. Recent publications include "Empathy, tact and the freedom to be natural" American Journal of Psychoanalysis (2014), "On not being able to symbolise" British Journal of Psychotherapy (2014), and "The ins and outs of listening as a psychoanalyst" Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication (2015). He has contributed the introduction to the first volume of the Collected Works of Winnicott, edited by Lesley Caldwell and Helen Taylor Robinson (2017) and has a forthcoming essay on "Creativity in everyday life" in Donald W. Winnicott and the History of the Present ed. Angela Joyce (Karnac).    

Joanna Ryan in discussion with Barry Watt What does psychoanalysis have to say about the emotional landscapes of class, the hidden injuries and disavowed privileges? How does class figure in clinical work and what part does it play in psychotherapeutic trainings? In these times of increasing inequality, Joanna Ryan will discuss aspects of her timely new book Class and Psychoanalysis: Landscapes of Inequality, exploring what can be learned about the psychic formations of class, and the class formations of psychoanalysis. Addressing some of the many challenges facing a psychoanalysis that aims to include class in its remit, she holds the tension between the radical and progressive potential of psychoanalysis, in its unique understandings of the unconscious, with its status as a mainly expensive and exclusive practice.The aim of this evening’s discussion, part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, is to open up debate about this important but neglected subject.“Class and Psychoanalysis is a text of great importance. Joanna Ryan writes in a clear and objective way about the neglect of social class in psychoanalysis, yet behind this objectivity is a passionate involvement that will strike a chord with all concerned psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. The book presents the best available overview of the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis in relation to social class, combining this with interview material from the author’s own studies of psychotherapists to give a detailed and compelling picture of how class enters the consulting room. Engaging with this profound yet accessible book is essential for all who care about class injuries and how we might find ways to respond to them.” - Stephen Frosh, Professor of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of LondonJoanna Ryan, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist; she has worked widely in clinical practice, teaching and supervision; in academic research; and in the politics of psychotherapy. She is co-author (with N. O'Connor) of Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis; co-editor (with S. Cartledge) of Sex and Love: New Thoughts on Old Contradictions; author of The Politics of Mental Handicap and many other publications.Barry Watt is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a senior psychotherapist at the Psychosis Therapy Project, a member of The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and a social housing activist and campaigner.

Bella Freud (Fashion designer) in conversation with Amanda Harlech (Creative consultant and writer): Bella Freud is a London-born fashion desiigner and film maker. She is renowned for her signature jumpers Je t’aime Jane, Ginsberg is God and 1970. Fans of her work include Alexa Chung, Laura Bailey, Kate Moss and Alison Mosshart. Bella Freud launched her eponymous label in 1990 and won Most Innovative Designer at the London Fashion Awards in 1991, when she produced a Super 8 short film ‘Day at the Races’ as an alternative to a fashion show. Bella continued to produce films and seasonal catwalk shows and in 1999 began her fashion film collaboration with John Malkovich. Between 2004 and 2006 Bella was appointed head of womenswear for the relaunch of Biba. She has also consulted for Miss Selfridge and Jaeger. In 2011 Bella co-wrote an experimental short film Submission with Bafta winning director Martina Amati and in 2013 she art directed the short film Je T’Ecoute, starring Lara Stone, which screened at White Cube Bermondsey. Bella’s directorial debut was ‘Girl Boils Egg’, a two minute film commissioned by Nick Knight for SHOWstudio.com Bella has an ongoing Blank Canvas collaboration with Fred Perry and a range of perfume and scented candles inspired by her signature sweaters. The first Bella Freud stand alone store is located at 49 Chiltern Street, London.

Shaun Cole (biog)The ‘Great Masculine Renunciation’ Re-assessed Dr Shaun Cole is Associate Dean Postgraduate Communities at London College of Fashion. He was formerly Head of Contemporary Programmes at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he curated several exhibitions, most notably Graphic Responses to AIDS (1996), Dressing the Male (1999) and Black British Style (2004). He is Vice Chair of the Costume Society UK and associate editor of the journal Fashion Style and Popular Culture. He was consultant on exhibitions A Queer History of Fashion (FIT New York) and Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s (V&A, London). Shaun Cole has also written and lectured on the subject of menswear and gay fashion and his publications include ‘Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (2000), Dialogue: Relationships in Graphic Design (2005) The Story of Men's Underwear (2010) and Fashion Media: Past and Present (2013).

Philip Mann:The Dandy : Pathological Hero of Modernism Philip Mann was born in Hanover, Germany, and moved to England in 1988 where he acquired a degree in the History of Art (First Class Honours). He went on to work with the Archigram group of architects, curating their major retrospective in Vienna in 1994. Since then he has written for various publications, notably Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Vogue. He is often invited to lecture about matters sartorial-dandiaecal in Vienna, New York, Bern and, of course, London. Mann has worked intermittently on what has become The Dandy at Dusk since 1998. It will be published by Head of Zeus in October, 2017.  

Zowie Broach: Introductory Thoughts Zowie Broach is the head of fashion at London’s Royal College of Art. She first attracted attention for co-founding avant-garde fashion label, BOUDICCA. Launched in 1997 with her partner, Brian Kirkby. the line of highly conceptual designs and architecturally inspired tailoring became known for its non-conformist approach to commerce – for the first five years, Broach’s brand didn’t actually produces clothes for sale, other than private orders for friends. Consistently blurring the lines between fashion and art, Broach and Kirkby’s work has been displayed at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside her role as a designer and artist, Zowie Broach has been involved in fashion education for over a decade. Teaching for eight years at the University of Westminster in London, Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York, SAIC in Chicago and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Between 2009 and 2011, Broach was appointed designer in residence at London College of Fashion. As the head of fashion at the Royal College of Art, Broach has put an emphasis on the importance of artistic and intellectual experimentation, telling NY TIMES in June 2017: “From the moment I arrived here, I made it clear that I want these students to feel equipped to ask urgent questions,” and adding, “They need to feel a sense of ownership over their own cultures. They are the future, after all. It is my job is to make them feel empowered and confident enough to have strong, distinctive points of view." After the RCA’s 2015 MA graduate fashion show, the first under Broach’s instruction, Suzy Menkes declared Broach’s appointment heralded a “new era” in London fashion.

Valerie Steele: Freud and Fashion Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997, including The Corset, London Fashion, Gothic: Dark Glamour; Daphne Guinness, A Queer History of Fashion, Dance and Fashion and Proust’s Muse. She is also the author or editor of more than 25 books, including Paris Fashion, Women of Fashion, Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power, The Corset, The Berg Companion to Fashion, and. Fashion Designers A-Z: The Collection of The Museum at FIT. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian. In addition, she is founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in Fashion Studies. Steele combines serious scholarship (and a Yale Ph.D) with the rare ability to communicate with general audiences. As author, curator, editor, and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion. She has appeared on many television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Undressed: The Story of Fashion. Described in The Washington Post as one of “fashion’s brainiest women” and by Suzy Menkes as “The Freud of Fashion,” she was listed as one of “The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry” in the Business of Fashion 500: (2014 and 2015).          

Mary Wild:Cinematic repetition in The Duke of Burgundy and Paterson Mary Wild’s contribution to the Symposium will be to locate and analyse repetition compulsion, uncanny excess of life, and the Nietzschean eternal return in two recent cinema releases: Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy (2014), about a woman who tests the limits of her relationship with her lesbian lover, and Jim Jarmusch's Paterson (2016), a quiet observation of the triumphs and defeats of daily life along with the poetry evident in its smallest details. The Freudian death drive will be shown to have very little to do with the desire for self-destruction, or for the return to an inorganic state; it is rather, as Slavoj Zizek says in The Parallax View, “the very opposite of dying – a name for the ‘undead’ eternal life itself, for the horrible fate of being caught in the endless repetitive cycle of wandering around in guilt and pain.” Mary Wild is the creator of the popular PROJECTIONS lecture series (psychoanalysis for film interpretation), which has been running regularly at Freud Museum London since 2012. She teaches in the Humanities department at City Lit and is featured in the Shoreditch House cinema events programme. She has produced similar events at ICA, BFI, NYU and Central Saint Martins. Her interests include cinematic representations of identity, the unconscious, hysteria, neoliberal economics, mental illness and love. 

Gwion JonesEternal Recurrence: An obsessional nightmare? If we interrogate Nietsche’s notion of eternal recurrence in the light of Lacan’s pronouncements on repetition from Seminar 11, of a failed attempt at mastery over desire, we arrive at a very different appreciation of its dialectic. Using this question as my starting point I propose to apply Lacan's thesis to the psychical operation of magical notions of time in particular, as manifest in obsessional neurosis, thereby extrapolating its implications for the wider themes of the symposium; namely the operation of mythic narratives in human subjectivity more generally, and of the abiding lure of spiritual ideas of fate and destiny. The aim of this argument is to follow a path originally laid down by Jacques Derrida in reconceptualising the influence of Nietzsche on the development of Freud’s metapsychology, through this pathologisation of Nietsche’s seminal thesis. Gwion Jones is a psychoanalyst working in private practice as well as lecturer in psychology at Coventry University.

Dany NobusFreud’s Nietzsche: Eternal Recurrence, Symptomatic Acts and the Practice of Gift-Giving. For his seventieth birthday on 6 May 1926, Otto Rank sent Freud a precious gift from Paris: the special edition of the Musarionausgabe of Nietzsche’s complete works. To Rank’s wife, Freud expressed how pleased he was with the unexpected present; to Ernest Jones, he conceded that it had clearly been a symptomatic act on Rank’s part. Nonetheless, when time came for Freud to pack his belongings in 1938, he could not leave the volumes behind, and they currently occupy a central place in his library at Maresfield Gardens. Over the years, Rank’s gift has been interpreted in different ways, yet little has been said about Freud’s acceptance of this Nietzsche, and even less about whether he actually read any of the books. And what happened to the Nietzsche Freud had bought in 1900, and of which he said to Fließ that he would hope to find words in it for much that had remained mute in him? Dany Nobus is Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology at Brunel University London, where he also convenes the MA Programme in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society. In addition, he is the Chair of the Freud Museum London, and the author of numerous publications on the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In April 2017, he was presented with the Sarton medal of the University of Ghent for his contributions to the history and theory of psychoanalysis, which coincided with the publication of a new book entitled The Law of Desire: On Lacan’s “Kant with Sade”.

Sebastian GardnerFigures of Thought and Unconscious Configurations in Nietzsche and Freud I begin by rehearsing briefly the interpretative difficulties familiarly posed by Nietzsche's conception of eternal recurrence. Is eternal recurrence a cosmological or metaphysical hypothesis? Is it a metaphorical formulation of some doctrine of Nietzsche's? Or a thought-experiment with diagnostic value? Or a fiction with ethical and therapeutic import? I suggest that, although the idea of eternal recurrence makes sense as a piece of metaphysics, the indeterminacy of its status – its resistance to classification ¬– is integral to its meaning, as Nietzsche conceives it. In order to address the further question, concerning how eternal recurrence may be related to psychoanalytic theory, I take up the suggestion, found in hermeneutical construals of Freud, that the unconscious exhibits a ''causality of fate''. This allows us, I suggest, to join Nietzsche and Freud on a single conceptual plane without confusing their fundamentally distinct projects. Sebastian Gardner is Professor of Philosophy at University College London. His interests are in Kant, post-Kantian idealism, C19 German philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. He is the author of Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (CUP, 1993), Kant and the 'Critique of Pure Reason' (Routledge, 1999), and Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' (Continuum, 2009). The Transcendental Turn (OUP), a collection of papers co-edited with Matthew Grist, appeared in 2015.

Following a widely attended talk earlier this year, Professor Craig Clunas returns for another fascinating exploration into Freud’s Chinese collection as part of Asian Art in London 2017.Freud's passion for, and avid collecting of antiquities is well known, but attention has tended to focus on the objects he owned from the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean; Greece and Rome, and Ancient Egypt. His Chinese collections, begun later in life, are by contrast less well known and relatively little-discussed, even though Chinese objects were literally staring him in the face as he sat at his desk, as many now-iconic images show. His beloved dogs were in a sense 'Chinese' too (and certainly had Chinese names). This lecture looks at Freud's Chinese objects, and at knowledge about those objects, situating him in the context of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century ideas of the ‘East', and examining some surprising parallels with his close contemporary, the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943).Craig Clunas is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, and the first scholar of Asian art to hold this Chair. He has worked as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as teaching art history at the universities of Chicago and Sussex, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Visual China Research Centre, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. In 2014 he co-curated the British Museum exhibition, 'Ming: 50 Years that Changed China'. His most recent book, based on the 2012 Mellon lectures delivered at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, is ‘Chinese Painting and its Audiences’ (2017).

Author's Talk: Eric Smadja In Freud and Culture, we explore the representations of society and culture that Freud developed in the course of his work and we shall distinguish two periods. Distinct from contemporary sociological and anthropological conceptions, they led to his construction of a personal socio-anthropology that was virulently criticised by the social sciences. But what exactly is meant here by “culture” and “society”? Do we mean Freud’s own Viennese society or Western “civilised” society in general? In addition, Freud was interested in historical and “primitive” societies from the evolutionist perspective of the British anthropologists of his time. Our work considers the interrelationship between these different societies and cultures, and raises many questions. What constitutes a culture? What are its essential traits, its functions, its relationships with society, for example. Moreover, we present the Freudian central notion of Kulturarbeit, which is constructed from a strictly Freudian perspective. Eric Smadja is a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, a member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris and of the International Psychoanalytical Association, a couples psychoanalyst. He is also an anthropologist, an associate member of the American Anthropological Association and a member of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. In 2007, he was awarded the IPA’s Prize for “Exceptional Contribution made to Psychoanalytical Research”. His works are pluri and interdisciplinary in nature and his current research deals with : “Freud, Durkheim and Mauss: on Symbolism and Symbolization” He is the author of the following books: - Laughter (Le Rire) “Que sais-je” series, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, April 1993 (1st ed.), September 2011 (4th ed.); 1st English edition, September 2013 (College Publications, London); - The Oedipus Complex, Crystallizer of the Debate between Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (Le complexe d’Œdipe, cristallisateur du débat psychanalyse/anthropologie), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009. An English forthcoming edition by Routledge in June 2017. - The Couple: A Pluridisciplinary Story (Le Couple et son Histoire) Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, March 2011 (1st edition) ; 1st English edition in June 2016 (Routledge). - Couples in Psychoanalysis (Ed.) (Couples en psychanalyse) (Dir.), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, May 2013. - Freud and Culture (Freud et la Culture), Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, September 2013 ; A first English Edition by Karnac Books and The International Psychoanalytical Association.

Panel discussion: Joseph Berke, Stephen Frosh, Tali Loewenthal and Anthony Stadlen Predominantly, Sigmund Freud saw himself as an objective scientist. Initially, he gained renown as an anatomist, being the first person to dissect the testicles of an eel. Subsequently he made major contributions to histology and neurology, particularly through his study of Aphasia. Yet he became famous for his study of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. At the same time, he decried religion, including his own, as mired in magic and superstition. And he repeatedly denied that his work was a 'Jewish science,' even though he and almost all the founding fathers of psychoanalysis were Jewish, and his basic discoveries were rooted in the Jewish mystical tradition. That was the overt Freud. The covert Freud confessed that he was "not at all a man of science," rather an emotional "conquistador and adventurer." Moreover he maintained mystical texts in his library and, at times, studied with a distinguished Kabbalist, Rabbi Alexandre Safran. In 1977 on the creation Sigmund Freud Chair of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University, his daughter, Anna, addressed the issue of her father's work being a "Jewish science." She said that however much psychoanalysis may be dismissed for being unscientific or overly Jewish, she now believed that the term could now serve as a "title of honor." The discussants will consider whether this is still, or ever was, the case. JOSEPH BERKE MD, FRSM, FDAmBMPPPsychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Individuals and FamiliesCo_Founder, Arbours AssociationFounder and Director, Arbours Crisis CentreLecturer and WriterBooks include, Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness ( with M. Barnes) Why I Hate You and You Hate Me and most recently The Hidden Freud: His Hassidic Roots STEPHEN FROSH Pro-Vice-Master and Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of many books and papers on psychosocial studies and on psychoanalysis, including Feelings, Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic, A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory, and The Politics of Psychoanalysis. He has written two books on psychoanalysis and Jewish identities: Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis, and Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions. TALI LOEWENTHAL Dr Naftali Loewenthal was born in Haifa but was brought up in London. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies of UCL, lecturing in Jewish Spirituality. He authored Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) and many scholarly articles. His forthcoming book with the Littman Library is entitled “Hippy in the Mikveh, Essays on Habad Thought and History”. He also directs the Chabad Research Unit, an educational organisation running study groups and producing ‘Friday Night’ for discussion at the Shabbat table, and teaches Religious Studies in the Lubavitch Senior Girls School. He is married to Professor Kate-Miriam Loewenthal. They have a large family. ANTHONY STADLEN Anthony Stadlen is an existential and psychoanalytic psychotherapist (UKCP, BPC), Daseinsanalyst (IFDA Independent Effective Member for UK), family analyst and teacher. Research Fellow of Freud Museum 1988-90. Since 1979 has conducted historical research on the paradigm case studies of Freud, Binswanger, Boss, Laing, Esterson, and other therapists. Author of many papers including 'Was Dora wel ziek?' in Vrij Nederland (1985); 'Freud's Judaism: Renewal and Betrayal' in Is Psychoanalysis Another Religion (1993, published by Freud Museum); 'The Madhouse of Being' in Daseinsanalyse (2007). Convenor since 1996 of Inner Circle Seminars, London, an existential, phenomenological search for truth in the foundations of psychotherapy. Lay leyener (Torah scroll reciter) and chazan (cantor) at Belsize Square Synagogue.  

Professor Dany Nobus is joined by eminent scholar, author, journalist and psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco to discuss her latest book, Freud: In His Time and Ours. Élisabeth Roudinesco offers a bold and modern reinterpretation of the iconic founder of psychoanalysis. Based on new archival sources, this is Freud’s biography for the twenty-first century—a critical appraisal, at once sympathetic and impartial, of a genius greatly admired and yet greatly misunderstood in his own time and in ours. Roudinesco traces Freud’s life from his upbringing as the eldest of eight siblings in a prosperous Jewish-Austrian household to his final days in London, a refugee of the Nazis’ annexation of his homeland. She recreates the milieu of fin de siècle Vienna in the waning days of the Habsburg Empire—an era of extraordinary artistic innovation, given luster by such luminaries as Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, and Gustav Mahler. In the midst of it all, at the modest residence of Berggasse 19, Freud pursued his clinical investigation of nervous disorders, blazing a path into the unplumbed recesses of human consciousness and desire. “Through seamlessly and eloquently weaving together details from Freud’s time and our own, [Roudinesco] provides a refreshingly new and welcome account—warts and all.”—Janet Sayers, Times Higher Education “What makes Freud: In His Time And Ours…such a captivating read, is the author’s ability to explain what are often complex, deeply-layered, and dark taboo subjects, into a language that is easily understood… [A] brilliant biography.”—J. P. O’Mallery, The Irish Examiner