Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

Exciting things are happening at the Freud Museum London this summer. A century after Sigmund Freud’s revolutionary ideas reached a wider public, his final home, dedicated to preserving his legacy, has invited artists, designers, writers and performers to revisit Freud’s seminal paper The Unconscious (1915) Using a combination of psychological games, scientific and historical information and engaging displays and workshops, The Festival of the Unconscious will encourage visitors to think and learn about the unconscious mind and how it influences our behaviour. The Museum will become a strange and mysterious place, where writings, objects and artistic works will offer insights into unconscious experience. Newly commissioned films by animators from Kingston University will weave through the house; sound and video installations by London-based art project Disinformation will occupy the dining room, and an installation by stage designers from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, inspired by the work of cosmologist Carlos Frenk, will spectacularly transform Freud’s study. Visitors can contemplate their own unconscious associations through a personal display developed by Julian Rothenstein, co-author of the best-selling ‘Psychobox’. Finally there will be the unique opportunity of reclining and free-associating on a psychoanalytic couch, in Freud’s bedroom. Artistic contributions include The Dream Collector by Melanie Manchot, a 5-channel synched video and sound installation filmed in Mexico City - on view for the first time in the UK.Melanie Mckennell's Dreamweaving tapestry hangs nearby. Collaborative artists Brass Art present a video piece which uses Kinect scanners to capture intimate-scaled performances in the museum with sound composed by Monty Adkins. Other works include The Unconscious Project by art therapists teaching on the MA Art Psychotherapy course at Goldsmiths, University of London, while Sarah Ainslie andMartin Bladh will display works offering modern takes on the ‘Thematic Apperception Test’ and the Rorschach ink blot test. A set of Freudian Dreamcatchers by Jane Hoodlesstakes its inspiration from the dream symbols discussed in Freud's famous work 'The Interpretation of Dreams'. A season of wide-ranging and imaginative events, conferences and workshops accompany the exhibition. Highlights include Digging the Unconscious, a participatory archaeological dig in Freud’s garden, with performance artistlili Spain on 9 August, and a major interdisciplinary conference with keynote speakers Mark Solms and Salman Akhtar on 26/27 September. You can unlock your unconscious with workshops in drama, poetry and art,while Hip Hop poet Reveal will perform and talk about Freestyle Rap and its relation to unconscious communication. After the exhibition is over, the Festival events still continue with a major conference jointly organised with the British Journal of Psychotherapy. Mentalization and the Unconsciouswill take place on 28th November, with keynote speakers Nicola Abel-Hirsch, Catherine Freeman, Jean Knox, and Mary Target. Co-organiser and chair for the day is BJP editor, Ann Scott. Have you ever done something without knowing why? Despite the fact that the term is now associated with Freud, the existence of unconscious processes in the mind was recognised long before him. What Freud introduced was the revolutionary notion of a dynamic unconscious, working in a different way from consciousness, with its own kind of logic. He posited a part of the mind in which ideas associated w

Exciting things are happening at the Freud Museum London this summer. A century after Sigmund Freud’s revolutionary ideas reached a wider public, his final home, dedicated to preserving his legacy, has invited artists, designers, writers and performers to revisit Freud’s seminal paper The Unconscious (1915)Using a combination of psychological games, scientific and historical information and engaging displays and workshops, The Festival of the Unconscious will encourage visitors to think and learn about the unconscious mind and how it influences our behaviour.The Museum will become a strange and mysterious place, where writings, objects and artistic works will offer insights into unconscious experience. Newly commissioned films by animators from Kingston University will weave through the house; sound and video installations by London-based art project Disinformation will occupy the dining room, and an installation by stage designers from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, inspired by the work of cosmologist Carlos Frenk, will spectacularly transform Freud’s study. Visitors can contemplate their own unconscious associations through a personal display developed by Julian Rothenstein, co-author of the best-selling ‘Psychobox’. Finally there will be the unique opportunity of reclining and free-associating on a psychoanalytic couch, in Freud’s bedroom.Artistic contributions include The Dream Collector by Melanie Manchot, a 5-channel synched video and sound installation filmed in Mexico City - on view for the first time in the UK.Melanie Mckennell's Dreamweaving tapestry hangs nearby. Collaborative artists Brass Art present a video piece which uses Kinect scanners to capture intimate-scaled performances in the museum with sound composed by Monty Adkins. Other works include The Unconscious Project by art therapists teaching on the MA Art Psychotherapy course at Goldsmiths, University of London, while Sarah Ainslie andMartin Bladh will display works offering modern takes on the ‘Thematic Apperception Test’ and the Rorschach ink blot test. A set of Freudian Dreamcatchers by Jane Hoodlesstakes its inspiration from the dream symbols discussed in Freud's famous work 'The Interpretation of Dreams'.A season of wide-ranging and imaginative events, conferences and workshops accompany the exhibition. Highlights include Digging the Unconscious, a participatory archaeological dig in Freud’s garden, with performance artistlili Spain on 9 August, and a major interdisciplinary conference with keynote speakers Mark Solms and Salman Akhtar on 26/27 September. You can unlock your unconscious with workshops in drama, poetry and art,while Hip Hop poet Reveal will perform and talk about Freestyle Rap and its relation to unconscious communication.After the exhibition is over, the Festival events still continue with a major conference jointly organised with the British Journal of Psychotherapy. Mentalization and the Unconsciouswill take place on 28th November, with keynote speakers Nicola Abel-Hirsch, Catherine Freeman, Jean Knox, and Mary Target. Co-organiser and chair for the day is BJP editor, Ann Scott.Have you ever done something without knowing why?Despite the fact that the term is now associated with Freud, the existence of unconscious processes in the mind was recognised long before him. What Freud introduced was the revolutionary notion of a dynamic unconscious, working in a different way from consciousness, with its own kind of logic. He posited a part of the mind in which ideas associated with ‘wishful impulses’, childhood experiences and unacceptable thoughts are hidden from conscious awareness but continue to motivate our behaviour. Starting with his own dreams, he went on to show that the unconscious reveals itself not only in the unexplained symptoms of ‘mental illness’ but in countless manifestations of everyday life.We laugh at a joke, but we don’t know why. A slip of the tongue reveals an embarrassing thought or a hidden intention. Thoughts come into our head, but where do they come from? We repeat patterns of self-destructive behaviour or plague ourselves with irrational fears. It is as if everything we do or say has a hidden dimension, a sub-text. The discovery of the unconscious means that we are no longer ‘masters in our own house’ – we literally do not know who we are.In 1915, Freud wrote his paper on The Unconscious, which was an attempt to give scientific account of how the unconscious works. It is not an entirely successful paper, grappling as he is with the ‘unknown’. He makes hypotheses, modifies them, tries again. Freud often finds himself in the position of a cosmologist, trying to give an account of what is in a black hole, or what ‘cold dark matter’ is composed of. They just don’t know. But they know dark matter and black holes exist, obey their own laws and affect the galaxies in which they find themselves.Freud’s metapsychology may not have the same impact as his captivating case histories or his books on dreams, jokes, and slips of the tongue, but his 1915 paper established ‘the unconscious’ as the principal object of psychoanalysis and the key term of its theory.The Festival of the Unconscious invites visitors to explore Freud’s challenging idea through talks, performances and a major exhibition. As befits such an elusive concept, most of the works on display are not designed to transmit knowledge, but to evoke something of the visitor’s own unconscious. By engaging with them, we hope visitors may catch a glimpse of a world that is both strange and familiar.Freud Museum exhibitions are free with admissionAn exciting season of talks, performances, conferences and events accompany the exhibition.

Author's Talk: John Foot - Chaired by Graham Music Writer and Professor of Modern Italian History, John Foot discusses his latest publication, The Man Who Closed the Asylums (Verso August 2015) - The fascinating story of Franco Basaglia, one of the key intellectual and cultural figures of 1960s counterculture—a contemporary of R.D. Laing who worked to overturn institutions from within and ended up transforming mental health care in Italy.Inspired by the writings of authors such as Primo Levi, R. D. Laing, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon, and the practices of experimental therapeutic communities in the UK, Basaglia’s seminal work as a psychiatrist and campaigner in Gorizia, Parma and Trieste fed into and substantially contributed to the national and international movement of 1968. In 1978 a law was passed (the ‘Basaglia law’) which sanctioned the closure of the entire Italian asylum system.The first comprehensive study of this revolutionary approach to mental health care, The Man Who Closed the Asylums is a gripping account of one of the most influential movements in twentieth- century psychiatry, which helped to transform the way we see mental illness. Basaglia’s work saved countless people from a miserable existence, and his legacy persists, as an object lesson in the struggle against the brutality and ignorance that the establishment peddles to the public as common sense.John Foot is Professor of Modern Italian History in the School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol. He has published several books on sports and contemporary Italian history. He writes a blog for the Italian magazine Internazionale and has written for the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and History Today. He was Co-editor of the journal Modern Italy between 2010 and 2014.Graham Music (PHD) is Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics and an adult psychotherapist in private practice. His publications include Nurturing Natures,Attachment and Children's Emotional, Sociocultural and Brain Development (2011), Affect and Emotion(2001), and 'The Good Life: Wellbeing and the new science of altruism, selfishness and Immoralityl' (2014). He has a particular interest in exploring the interface between developmental findings and clinical work. Formerly Associate Clinical Director of the Tavstock's child and family department, he has worked therapeutically with maltreated children for over two decades, has managed a range of services concerned with the aftermath of child maltreatment and neglect and organised many community based psychotherapy services,. He has recently been working clinically with forensic cases at the Portman clinic. He teaches, lectures and supervises on a range of trainings in Britain and abroad.

Author's Talk: John Foot - Chaired by Graham Music  Writer and Professor of Modern Italian History, John Foot discusses his latest publication, The Man Who Closed the Asylums (Verso August 2015) - The fascinating story of Franco Basaglia, one of the key intellectual and cultural figures of 1960s counterculture—a contemporary of R.D. Laing who worked to overturn institutions from within and ended up transforming mental health care in Italy. Inspired by the writings of authors such as Primo Levi, R. D. Laing, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon, and the practices of experimental therapeutic communities in the UK, Basaglia’s seminal work as a psychiatrist and campaigner in Gorizia, Parma and Trieste fed into and substantially contributed to the national and international movement of 1968. In 1978 a law was passed (the ‘Basaglia law’) which sanctioned the closure of the entire Italian asylum system. The first comprehensive study of this revolutionary approach to mental health care, The Man Who Closed the Asylums is a gripping account of one of the most influential movements in twentieth- century psychiatry, which helped to transform the way we see mental illness. Basaglia’s work saved countless people from a miserable existence, and his legacy persists, as an object lesson in the struggle against the brutality and ignorance that the establishment peddles to the public as common sense. John Foot is Professor of Modern Italian History in the School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol. He has published several books on sports and contemporary Italian history. He writes a blog for the Italian magazine Internazionale and has written for the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and History Today. He was Co-editor of the journal Modern Italy between 2010 and 2014. Graham Music (PHD) is Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics and an adult psychotherapist in private practice. His publications include Nurturing Natures,Attachment and Children's Emotional, Sociocultural and Brain Development (2011), Affect and Emotion(2001), and 'The Good Life: Wellbeing and the new science of altruism, selfishness and Immoralityl' (2014). He has a particular interest in exploring the interface between developmental findings and clinical work. Formerly Associate Clinical Director of the Tavstock's child and family department, he has worked therapeutically with maltreated children for over two decades, has managed a range of services concerned with the aftermath of child maltreatment and neglect and organised many community based psychotherapy services,. He has recently been working clinically with forensic cases at the Portman clinic. He teaches, lectures and supervises on a range of trainings in Britain and abroad.

Lecture and performance: How do ideas pop into your head? You can think about the answer to this question at a lecture and performance about the art of Freestyle Rap by Hip-Hop artist and spoken word poet, Reveal. Using recent studies in neurology and psychology, theories of memory schemata and ideas about unconscious communication, Reveal will explore the basis of his craft within the resonant environment of the Freud Museum, and in a practical demonstration will improvise a rap to words and questions called out by members of the audience. Reveal is a London based Iranian Hip-Hop artist, ethnomusicologist and writer. He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1983 and moved to London aged 2 with his parents, mainly to escape the Iran-Iraq war. He was raised in inner city London but continued to travel back to Tehran regularly. Having links to such contrasting urban environments has provided him with a sense of dual identity for most of his life. At a young age Reveal began performing Hip-Hop music and releasing songs under the Artist name "Reveal Poison", and at aged 16 he won the 2000 UK Freestyle Knock-out Battle Rap Championships. He went on to form the group “Poisonous Poets” who were one of the first ever UK Hip-Hop acts to be signed to a major record label, penning a deal with BMG/Arista in 2001. It was around this period that he first became aware of the emerging Persian Hip-Hop scene in Iran and he travelled back to Tehran to begin a series of collaborations with the city's artists. Reveal is currently enrolled on a Mmus Ethnomusicology programme at SOAS where he is studying part-time alongside doing youth work, touring and releasing music.

Lecture and performance:  How do ideas pop into your head? You can think about the answer to this question at a lecture and performance about the art of Freestyle Rap by Hip-Hop artist and spoken word poet, Reveal. Using recent studies in neurology and psychology, theories of memory schemata and ideas about unconscious communication, Reveal will explore the basis of his craft within the resonant environment of the Freud Museum, and in a practical demonstration will improvise a rap to words and questions called out by members of the audience.  Reveal is a London based Iranian Hip-Hop artist, ethnomusicologist and writer. He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1983 and moved to London aged 2 with his parents, mainly to escape the Iran-Iraq war. He was raised in inner city London but continued to travel back to Tehran regularly. Having links to such contrasting urban environments has provided him with a sense of dual identity for most of his life. At a young age Reveal began performing Hip-Hop music and releasing songs under the Artist name "Reveal Poison", and at aged 16 he won the 2000 UK Freestyle Knock-out Battle Rap Championships. He went on to form the group “Poisonous Poets” who were one of the first ever UK Hip-Hop acts to be signed to a major record label, penning a deal with BMG/Arista in 2001. It was around this period that he first became aware of the emerging Persian Hip-Hop scene in Iran and he travelled back to Tehran to begin a series of collaborations with the city's artists. Reveal is currently enrolled on a Mmus Ethnomusicology programme at SOAS where he is studying part-time alongside doing youth work, touring and releasing music.

An Evening of Psychoacoustic and Optical IllusionsThe book Rorschach Audio: Art & Illusion for Sound, by author and installation artist Joe Banks, takes as its central metaphor the comparison between the perception of ambiguous speech-sounds, and the “projective” interpretation of the famous ink-blot tests devised by the Freudian psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in 1921.With a nod to the model of perception proposed by Freud, Banks explores relationships between mechanisms of aural and visual perception, demonstrating a series of highly entertaining and sometimes bizarre psychoacoustic and optical illusions.With a further nod to ideas proposed in Freud’s The Future of An Illusion, the lecture focusses on a critique of Spiritualistic and allegedly supernatural Electronic Voice Phenomena (ghost-voice) recordings, a theme wildly popular in contemporary sound installation art. Banks traces the illusions involved as far back as the artist generally recognised as the most important figure in the history of Western art, and reveals the role that relatively little-known wartime intelligence work with sound had on what is arguably the most important work of visual arts theory ever published.Joe Banks produces the installation art and electronic music project Disinformation. Disinformation exhibits and performs internationally, has been the subject of over a dozen UK solo exhibitions - including a recent solo installation at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, and has exhibited in group shows at Kiasma (Helsinki), CCCB (Barcelona), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge) and The Hayward Gallery (London).

An Evening of Psychoacoustic and Optical Illusions The book Rorschach Audio: Art & Illusion for Sound, by author and installation artist Joe Banks, takes as its central metaphor the comparison between the perception of ambiguous speech-sounds, and the “projective” interpretation of the famous ink-blot tests devised by the Freudian psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in 1921. With a nod to the model of perception proposed by Freud, Banks explores relationships between mechanisms of aural and visual perception, demonstrating a series of highly entertaining and sometimes bizarre psychoacoustic and optical illusions. With a further nod to ideas proposed in Freud’s The Future of An Illusion, the lecture focusses on a critique of Spiritualistic and allegedly supernatural Electronic Voice Phenomena (ghost-voice) recordings, a theme wildly popular in contemporary sound installation art. Banks traces the illusions involved as far back as the artist generally recognised as the most important figure in the history of Western art, and reveals the role that relatively little-known wartime intelligence work with sound had on what is arguably the most important work of visual arts theory ever published. Joe Banks produces the installation art and electronic music project Disinformation. Disinformation exhibits and performs internationally, has been the subject of over a dozen UK solo exhibitions - including a recent solo installation at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, and has exhibited in group shows at Kiasma (Helsinki), CCCB (Barcelona), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge) and The Hayward Gallery (London).

While the contents of the unconscious might be obscure and perplexing, when Freud spoke about 'the unconscious' he meant something very precise. This talk will look at Freud's 'discovery' of the unconscious, and at his conceptualisation of it. It will also deal with the peculiar logic of symptom formation. From there, it will go on to look at Lacan's notion of the language-like unconscious, showing how this was developed in accordance with Freud's ideas. Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, where she regularly lectures. She is the author of No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), and is the editor of 'Hysteria Today', a collection of essays to be published by Karnac later this year. She also writes for The Guardian and teaches at Camberwell School of Art. Part of an exciting season of talks, events and conferences accompanying the exhibition ‘Festival of the Unconscious’, 24 June- 4 October 2015.

While the contents of the unconscious might be obscure and perplexing, when Freud spoke about 'the unconscious' he meant something very precise. This talk will look at Freud's 'discovery' of the unconscious, and at his conceptualisation of it. It will also deal with the peculiar logic of symptom formation. From there, it will go on to look at Lacan's notion of the language-like unconscious, showing how this was developed in accordance with Freud's ideas.Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, where she regularly lectures. She is the author of No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), and is the editor of 'Hysteria Today', a collection of essays to be published by Karnac later this year. She also writes for The Guardian and teaches at Camberwell School of Art.Part of an exciting season of talks, events and conferences accompanying the exhibition ‘Festival of the Unconscious’, 24 June- 4 October 2015.

Stephen Gee: Michael Tippett: From Persecution to Paradise Beate Perrey: Mixing memory and Desire: The Voice of Freud, Schubert and Schumann Stephen Gee: Michael Tippett: From Persecution to Paradise Michael Tippett’s musical output spans the decades from the early 1930s to the 1990s. It is by turns exuberantly lyrical and vibrantly modernist. He was that rare person in England, an intellectual whose life and work was engaged with the times he lived in. In the 1930s his development as a composer went alongside a passionate commitment to the politics of the Left. His personal life and psychic freedom were also at stake. Like Auden and Britten, Tippett was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal and its social expression unthinkable. He turned to a Jungian analyst, John Layard, and his sessions with him together with his own dream analysis helped him to find enough emotional and psychic freedom to release his creative imagination. Beate Perrey: Mixing memory and Desire: The Voice of Freud, Schubert and Schumann Freud didn't discover the unconscious; rather, his whole way of thinking and style of writing are imbued with the ideals and affective investments of his visionary predecessors, the Early Romantic generation of writers and poets such as Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Brentano and Eichendorff. Nor was Freud much of a musician, or even known as a music lover. And yet, Freud’s ideas, concepts and metaphors can bring a whole new intensity both to our perception and understanding of that special sound world which is the German Lied. I shall, in a few chosen songs by Schubert and Schumann, explore their idiosyncratic beauty and multilayered meanings.

Stephen Gee: Michael Tippett: From Persecution to ParadiseBeate Perrey: Mixing memory and Desire: The Voice of Freud, Schubert and SchumannStephen Gee: Michael Tippett: From Persecution to ParadiseMichael Tippett’s musical output spans the decades from the early 1930s to the 1990s. It is by turns exuberantly lyrical and vibrantly modernist. He was that rare person in England, an intellectual whose life and work was engaged with the times he lived in. In the 1930s his development as a composer went alongside a passionate commitment to the politics of the Left. His personal life and psychic freedom were also at stake. Like Auden and Britten, Tippett was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal and its social expression unthinkable. He turned to a Jungian analyst, John Layard, and his sessions with him together with his own dream analysis helped him to find enough emotional and psychic freedom to release his creative imagination.Beate Perrey: Mixing memory and Desire: The Voice of Freud, Schubert and SchumannFreud didn't discover the unconscious; rather, his whole way of thinking and style of writing are imbued with the ideals and affective investments of his visionary predecessors, the Early Romantic generation of writers and poets such as Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Brentano and Eichendorff. Nor was Freud much of a musician, or even known as a music lover. And yet, Freud’s ideas, concepts and metaphors can bring a whole new intensity both to our perception and understanding of that special sound world which is the German Lied. I shall, in a few chosen songs by Schubert and Schumann, explore their idiosyncratic beauty and multilayered meanings.

Lesley Chamberlain: Thomas Mann, Music and Civilisation’s Discontents For Thomas Mann, German Romantic music, especially the music of Wagner, opened up the discontents of civilization, offering a regressive escape from excessive cultural pressures. Using Freudian insights to blend Nietzsche’s response to Wagner with worries about his own unadmitted homosexuality, and his role as a writer/artist in a strictly regulated middle class environment, Mann fictionalized the most catastrophic moments in German history as moments when civilization succumbed to the devil in the guise of music.

Lesley Chamberlain: Thomas Mann, Music and Civilisation’s DiscontentsFor Thomas Mann, German Romantic music, especially the music of Wagner, opened up the discontents of civilization, offering a regressive escape from excessive cultural pressures. Using Freudian insights to blend Nietzsche’s response to Wagner with worries about his own unadmitted homosexuality, and his role as a writer/artist in a strictly regulated middle class environment, Mann fictionalized the most catastrophic moments in German history as moments when civilization succumbed to the devil in the guise of music.

Richard Rusbridger: The Internal World of Don Giovanni Andrea Sabbadini: Psychoanalysis and Choral Singing Richard Rusbridger: The Internal World of Don Giovanni The author tries to account for the disturbing impact of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Some writers idealize Don Giovanni's power and vitality. The author’s view is that Mozart's music depicts him as a much emptier character, using phallic narcissism as a way of surviving a psychic catastrophe by projecting his pain into others. The music shows how Giovanni lives in projective identification with many other objects and part objects, masculine and feminine; and how he seduces them into complicity with his defensive system. This situation is contrasted musically with the world of the other characters, particularly the women, who are depicted as more ordinary, more complex and, in fact, more sensual. Andrea Sabbadini: Psychoanalysis and Choral Singing After a brief introduction on the relationship between psychoanalysis and music, and on the importance of sounds in early development, I will describe some aspects of my long experience as an amateur choral singer of classical music. Over the years singing, with its direct involvement of the body alongside the mind, has represented for me an invaluable contrast to my daily analytic work with patients, as well as a complement to it. I believe that my involvement with choral singing and psychoanalysis has much enriched my appreciation of both.