Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

Tom Artin: Primal Scene/Primal Wound: The psychoanalytic arc of Parsifal After they have witnessed the scarlet-suffused ritual revealing the Grail in Act I, Gurnemanz poses to Parsifal the primal question: Weißt du was du sahst? Do you know what you saw? This question is an enigma whose solution becomes the goal of the “pure fool’s” arduous quest. The answer, we will discover, is the primal scene, which, in Act II, is experienced by our hero not just vicariously, but in the flesh viscerally and shatteringly in Kundry’s passionate embrace. “Amfortas! The wound!” Parsifal cries out in retreat from the brink of penetration. In that sudden insight, he is overwhelmed by the reality of the castration threat lurking at the heart of every primal scene. The emotional sequelae following upon erotic enlightenment—guilt, remorse, compassion, and finally absolution—constitute the measured denouement of Parsifal, which culminates in a fantasy of redemption and the illusory resolution of primal anxiety. Tom Artin is the author most recently of What Parsifal Saw. A previous book, The Wagner Complex; Genesis and Meaning of The Ring, was presented at the Freud Museum’s Freud/Wagner conference in 2013. He has lectured on this book to Richard Wagner Societies in the United States, Austria, and Germany. Other books are The Allegory of Adventure: Reading Chrétien’s Erec and Yvain, and Earth Talk: Independent Voices on the Environment. Artin holds both a B.A. in English Literature, and a Ph D. in Comparative Medieval Literature from Princeton University.   In our conference 'Wagner, Freud and the End of Myth' (2013) we argued that by taking the mythic dimension and bringing it into the human realm, Wagner anticipated Freud in his depiction of unconscious processes of the mind. It could be said that Freud and Wagner were dealing with the same stuff - the “fundamental psychosexual issues that affect us all” as Barry Millington put it, and for that reason a fruitful dialogue can exist between their two bodies of work.The present conference is entirely devoted to Wagner’s final masterpiece, Parsifal, and explores whether this sublime, troubling and contentious work prefigures psychoanalytic insight or resists psychoanalytic interpretation. As a story of compassion and redemption, which nevertheless describes a world of perversion and mental anguish, what can Parsifal tell us about the secret springs of human desire and the conflicts of human nature? And how did Wagner manage to create it?

The Journeys of Anna Freud's Alpine Furniture In conjunction with the Austrian Cultural Forum Nine decorated chests and cupboards of Alpine origin stand in today’s Freud Museum. Anna Freud bought this rustic furniture in 1930 and used it to furnish the country house in the Vienna Woods which she shared with Dorothy Burlingham. When the Freuds fled Vienna in 1938 Dorothy Burlingham sent the furniture to the US. After the war this furniture returned to Europe, to the new summer house that Anna and Dorothy had bought in Walberswick on the east coast of England, and from there back to London, to Maresfield Gardens. This year this much travelled furniture has formed the starting point for an exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna, recreated through digital photography in the museum’s permanent display of similar pieces. These images transfer Anna Freud’s furniture back to Vienna, playing with ideas of remembering, place and time. The displays connect the Vienna of then and now with the London of yesterday and today, bringing the present together with the past. This talk adds another layer to this complex story, bringing the exhibit from Vienna – the recreation of Anna Freud’s furniture – back to London, and reunites the recreated versions with the originals. The exhibition curator Birgit Johler explores the story of the furniture in Freud’s Dining Room and how she created this extraordinary and innovative exhibition. She is joined in the discussion by: Anne-Marie Sandler, psychoanalyst, Director of the Anna Freud Centre from 1993 -1996, friend and colleague of Anna Freud Bettina von Zwehl, Artist in residence, Anna Freud project 2013-14, and exhibiting at the Freud Museum June-July 2016 Carol Seigel, Director, Freud Museum London

The Journeys of Anna Freud's Alpine Furniture   In conjunction with the Austrian Cultural Forum   Nine decorated chests and cupboards of Alpine origin stand in today’s Freud Museum. Anna Freud bought this rustic furniture in 1930 and used it to furnish the country house in the Vienna Woods which she shared with Dorothy Burlingham. When the Freuds fled Vienna in 1938 Dorothy Burlingham sent the furniture to the US. After the war this furniture returned to Europe, to the new summer house that Anna and Dorothy had bought in Walberswick on the east coast of England, and from there back to London, to Maresfield Gardens. This year this much travelled furniture has formed the starting point for an exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna, recreated through digital photography in the museum’s permanent display of similar pieces. These images transfer Anna Freud’s furniture back to Vienna, playing with ideas of remembering, place and time. The displays connect the Vienna of then and now with the London of yesterday and today, bringing the present together with the past. This talk adds another layer to this complex story, bringing the exhibit from Vienna – the recreation of Anna Freud’s furniture – back to London, and reunites the recreated versions with the originals. The exhibition curator Birgit Johler explores the story of the furniture in Freud’s Dining Room and how she created this extraordinary and innovative exhibition. She is joined in the discussion by: Anne-Marie Sandler, psychoanalyst, Director of the Anna Freud Centre from 1993 -1996, friend and colleague of Anna Freud Bettina von Zwehl, Artist in residence, Anna Freud project 2013-14, and exhibiting at the Freud Museum June-July 2016 Carol Seigel, Director, Freud Museum London

Freud's turn to Greek myth is very well known. His Oedipus emerges out of a long history of nineteenth-century obsessions with ancient Greece. But Freud's psychoanalysis of Greek myth was also a response to the nineteenth-century sexological fascination with the sexual decadence of ancient Rome. This talk explores the intriguing story of how the obscene and erotic verse of Roman epigram became an authoritative language for nineteenth-century sexual science, in order to ask, how and why did Freud's interest in Greek myth emerge out of the obscene sexual Latin of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis, the most famous work of sexology in the nineteenth century? Sex: Antiquity and it Legacy is published by I.B.Tauris (February, 2013). Dr Daniel Orrells is Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at King's College London. His research examines the presence of classical antiquity in modern cultural, literary and intellectual history. His most recent book Sex: Antiquity and its Legacy offers a fresh, new narrative about the importance of the ancient world for the development of sexology and psychoanalysis.

Freud's turn to Greek myth is very well known. His Oedipus emerges out of a long history of nineteenth-century obsessions with ancient Greece. But Freud's psychoanalysis of Greek myth was also a response to the nineteenth-century sexological fascination with the sexual decadence of ancient Rome. This talk explores the intriguing story of how the obscene and erotic verse of Roman epigram became an authoritative language for nineteenth-century sexual science, in order to ask, how and why did Freud's interest in Greek myth emerge out of the obscene sexual Latin of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis, the most famous work of sexology in the nineteenth century? Sex: Antiquity and it Legacy is published by I.B.Tauris (February, 2013). Dr Daniel Orrells is Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at King's College London. His research examines the presence of classical antiquity in modern cultural, literary and intellectual history. His most recent book Sex: Antiquity and its Legacy offers a fresh, new narrative about the importance of the ancient world for the development of sexology and psychoanalysis.

Lament: Bettina von Zwehl in conversation with Josh Cohen Lament is a new publication by Art/Books, which features two series of images by artist Bettina von Zwehl with new writing by psychoanalyst Josh Cohen. Cohen’s two texts are interwoven amongst the images, one a critical reflection on light and shadow, the other a poetic tale inspired by the torn photographs. This evening they will discuss both the publication and von Zwehl’s exhibition Invitation to Frequent the Shadows, on display at the Museum 7 June – 17 July 2016. Lament is published by Art/Books (July, 2016). Available from the Museum shop. Bettina von Zwehl lives and works in London. She has an MA Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art and BA (Hons) Photography from the London College of Printing. Recent solo exhibitions include Album 31, (with Sophy Rickett), 2015, Fotogaleriet, Oslo, Norway, touring to The Library of Birmingham, UK; Purdy Hicks, London (2014 and 2011); Road to 2012, Setting Out, commissioned by National Portrait Gallery, London, 2010; and The Photographers’ Gallery, 2005. Group exhibitions include Facing Histories, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2015; Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, National Gallery, London and touring to Fundacio La Caixa, Madrid, Spain, 2012 and In Repose, The Galleries at Moore, Philadelphia El Cuerpo (con) sentido: una (re)presentación visual, Centro de Historia, Zaragosa, 2008. Her work is held in many collections including Arts Council, London; British Council, London; Sammlung Spallart, Salzburg, Austria; Guggenheim, New York and Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Josh Cohen is a practising psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (2013), which won the BMA Board of Science Chair’s Choice Award for 2014 and was longlisted for the JQ/Wingate Literary Award, How to Read Freud (2005), Interrupting Auschwitz: Art, Religion, Philosophy (2003) and Spectacular Allegories: Postmodern American Writing and the Politics of Seeing (1998). He writes regularly for the TLS, Guardian, Prospect and New Statesman and is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Lament: Bettina von Zwehl in conversation with Josh Cohen Lament is a new publication by Art/Books, which features two series of images by artist Bettina von Zwehl with new writing by psychoanalyst Josh Cohen. Cohen’s two texts are interwoven amongst the images, one a critical reflection on light and shadow, the other a poetic tale inspired by the torn photographs. This evening they will discuss both the publication and von Zwehl’s exhibition Invitation to Frequent the Shadows, on display at the Museum 7 June – 17 July 2016. Lament is published by Art/Books (July, 2016). Available from the Museum shop. Bettina von Zwehl lives and works in London. She has an MA Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art and BA (Hons) Photography from the London College of Printing. Recent solo exhibitions include Album 31, (with Sophy Rickett), 2015, Fotogaleriet, Oslo, Norway, touring to The Library of Birmingham, UK; Purdy Hicks, London (2014 and 2011); Road to 2012, Setting Out, commissioned by National Portrait Gallery, London, 2010; and The Photographers’ Gallery, 2005. Group exhibitions include Facing Histories, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2015; Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, National Gallery, London and touring to Fundacio La Caixa, Madrid, Spain, 2012 and In Repose, The Galleries at Moore, Philadelphia El Cuerpo (con) sentido: una (re)presentación visual, Centro de Historia, Zaragosa, 2008. Her work is held in many collections including Arts Council, London; British Council, London; Sammlung Spallart, Salzburg, Austria; Guggenheim, New York and Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Josh Cohen is a practising psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (2013), which won the BMA Board of Science Chair’s Choice Award for 2014 and was longlisted for the JQ/Wingate Literary Award, How to Read Freud (2005), Interrupting Auschwitz: Art, Religion, Philosophy (2003) and Spectacular Allegories: Postmodern American Writing and the Politics of Seeing (1998). He writes regularly for the TLS, Guardian, Prospect and New Statesman and is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Author's Talk: Imogen Racz Building on research from my recent book Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday, this talk will consider how post-war sculptors have addressed ideas of the domestic uncanny. In order for these works to have resonance viewers needs to empathetically engage, and allow for a blurring between consciousness and the material world. They project onto the objects and installations their own understanding of reality. Freud wrote about how relationships with the world and society are veiled by customs and accepted ideas of normality. His essay ‘The Uncanny’ discussed how feelings of dread and unease could be conjured and felt. This was influential with surrealist artists, but what will be discussed here are artists working later, but who show influence of those ideas, including Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum and Gregor Schneider. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is published by I.B.Tauris (January, 2015). Available from the Museum shop. Dr Imogen Racz is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at Coventry University. She has published two books and written many articles. Her recent book Art and the Home; Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday, (I. B. Tauris 2015) is a thematic investigation into how post-war artists interpreted the abstract concepts that we have about the home, including enclosure, alienation, sentiment, female space, and the unmade house. Her current research has been focusing on the sculptor and photographer Helen Chadwick, placing her work of the 1980s into its artistic, theoretical and social contexts. This forms part of a larger, ongoing exploration of 1980s sculptural practices in Britain, especially that of women artists.

Author's Talk: Imogen Racz Building on research from my recent book Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday, this talk will consider how post-war sculptors have addressed ideas of the domestic uncanny. In order for these works to have resonance viewers needs to empathetically engage, and allow for a blurring between consciousness and the material world. They project onto the objects and installations their own understanding of reality. Freud wrote about how relationships with the world and society are veiled by customs and accepted ideas of normality. His essay ‘The Uncanny’ discussed how feelings of dread and unease could be conjured and felt. This was influential with surrealist artists, but what will be discussed here are artists working later, but who show influence of those ideas, including Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum and Gregor Schneider. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is published by I.B.Tauris (January, 2015). Available from the Museum shop. Dr Imogen Racz is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at Coventry University. She has published two books and written many articles. Her recent book Art and the Home; Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday, (I. B. Tauris 2015) is a thematic investigation into how post-war artists interpreted the abstract concepts that we have about the home, including enclosure, alienation, sentiment, female space, and the unmade house. Her current research has been focusing on the sculptor and photographer Helen Chadwick, placing her work of the 1980s into its artistic, theoretical and social contexts. This forms part of a larger, ongoing exploration of 1980s sculptural practices in Britain, especially that of women artists.

This presentation locates understanding of psychosis from an attachment perspective within its historical context, present concerns about the treatment of the mentally ill and explores how attachment theory can inform future understanding of the mentally ill. Disorganised attachment is argued to be intimately linked with psychosis despite Bowlby’s early modesty about how attachment theory could inform our understanding of psychosis. Attachment theory’s stress on the importance of grief, separation, trauma and violence are highlighted as causal factors in the aetiology of mental illness, and important issues to address as part of the healing or recovery. The experience of psychosis are conceptualised within their relational and social context, and therapeutic relationships and social change are proposed as being the treatments of choice. Kate Brown is a Bowlby Centre trained UKCP registered attachment based psychoanalytic psychotherapist who started her career in therapeutic communities working with adults with a variety of mental health difficulties, and with adolescents individually and in groups. She has worked with young mothers and in mainstream community psychiatric services with patients’ families. She has also provided time limited therapy with former servicemen who had experienced complex trauma. She teaches at The Bowlby Centre and has also delivered freelance training. Kate completed an MSc in psychotherapeutic approaches in mental health in 2012. She is a member of the Attachment Journal editorial group, former chair of the clinical forum at The Bowlby Centre. Kate has recently begun a PhD in the psychoanalysis department at Middlesex University in the history of the therapeutic community movement and the treatment of trauma. Kate has recently moved to Bournemouth where she will be developing a private practice. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

This presentation locates understanding of psychosis from an attachment perspective within its historical context, present concerns about the treatment of the mentally ill and explores how attachment theory can inform future understanding of the mentally ill. Disorganised attachment is argued to be intimately linked with psychosis despite Bowlby’s early modesty about how attachment theory could inform our understanding of psychosis. Attachment theory’s stress on the importance of grief, separation, trauma and violence are highlighted as causal factors in the aetiology of mental illness, and important issues to address as part of the healing or recovery. The experience of psychosis are conceptualised within their relational and social context, and therapeutic relationships and social change are proposed as being the treatments of choice. Kate Brown is a Bowlby Centre trained UKCP registered attachment based psychoanalytic psychotherapist who started her career in therapeutic communities working with adults with a variety of mental health difficulties, and with adolescents individually and in groups. She has worked with young mothers and in mainstream community psychiatric services with patients’ families. She has also provided time limited therapy with former servicemen who had experienced complex trauma. She teaches at The Bowlby Centre and has also delivered freelance training. Kate completed an MSc in psychotherapeutic approaches in mental health in 2012. She is a member of the Attachment Journal editorial group, former chair of the clinical forum at The Bowlby Centre. Kate has recently begun a PhD in the psychoanalysis department at Middlesex University in the history of the therapeutic community movement and the treatment of trauma. Kate has recently moved to Bournemouth where she will be developing a private practice. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

In the period following the end of the second world war in Britain, Kleinian psychoanalysis rapidly established itself as an influential paradigm for the treatment and understanding of the psychoses, within both psychoanalytical and medically minded psychiatric circles. Medically qualified psychoanalysts such as Hanna Segal, Herbert Rosenfeld and Wilfred Bion all made seminal contributions and the institutional approval and establishment ratification of their work, continues to be strongly felt to this day. In this paper, we will take up some arguments from the Canadian philosopher of science Ian Hacking, in order to look again at the tightly prescribed clinical techniques of Kleinian psychoanalysis of the period, especially in terms of the relationship between the social conditions of their analytic frame and the kind of theory of the psychoses this frames enables. In the twenty-first century, as we continue to battle to understand and provide effective treatments for those experiencing severe emotional distress, this paper hopes to remind us of the sensitive connection between the way in which we build theories of the mind out of the way we work with our patients and, in turn, the effect these theories have on those who seek our help. Barry Watt is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a member of the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is one of the senior practitioners at the Psychosis Therapy Project as well as a housing advocate and community activist. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

In the period following the end of the second world war in Britain, Kleinian psychoanalysis rapidly established itself as an influential paradigm for the treatment and understanding of the psychoses, within both psychoanalytical and medically minded psychiatric circles. Medically qualified psychoanalysts such as Hanna Segal, Herbert Rosenfeld and Wilfred Bion all made seminal contributions and the institutional approval and establishment ratification of their work, continues to be strongly felt to this day. In this paper, we will take up some arguments from the Canadian philosopher of science Ian Hacking, in order to look again at the tightly prescribed clinical techniques of Kleinian psychoanalysis of the period, especially in terms of the relationship between the social conditions of their analytic frame and the kind of theory of the psychoses this frames enables. In the twenty-first century, as we continue to battle to understand and provide effective treatments for those experiencing severe emotional distress, this paper hopes to remind us of the sensitive connection between the way in which we build theories of the mind out of the way we work with our patients and, in turn, the effect these theories have on those who seek our help. Barry Watt is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a member of the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is one of the senior practitioners at the Psychosis Therapy Project as well as a housing advocate and community activist. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

Starting from the hypothesis that psychosis makes up a structure, with a precise status for the unconscious, Stijn Vanheule explores how, from a Lacanian point of view, the treatment of psychosis is organized. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the psychotic symptom, or elementary phenomenon, and to the way transference characteristically takes shape. Crucial to this approach of treatment is that the psychoanalyst aims at restoring a place for the subject in relation to the Other, which is threatened in episodes of acute psychosis. Stijn Vanheule is professor of psychoanalysis and chair of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University (Belgium), and a psychoanalyst in private practice (member of the New Lacanian School for Psychoanalysis and World Association of Psychoanalyse). He is the author of The Subject of Psychosis – A Lacanian Perspective(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Diagnosis and the DSM – A Critical Review (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical psychodiagnostics. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

Starting from the hypothesis that psychosis makes up a structure, with a precise status for the unconscious, Stijn Vanheule explores how, from a Lacanian point of view, the treatment of psychosis is organized. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the psychotic symptom, or elementary phenomenon, and to the way transference characteristically takes shape. Crucial to this approach of treatment is that the psychoanalyst aims at restoring a place for the subject in relation to the Other, which is threatened in episodes of acute psychosis. Stijn Vanheule is professor of psychoanalysis and chair of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University (Belgium), and a psychoanalyst in private practice (member of the New Lacanian School for Psychoanalysis and World Association of Psychoanalyse). He is the author of The Subject of Psychosis – A Lacanian Perspective(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Diagnosis and the DSM – A Critical Review (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical psychodiagnostics. From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.