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Tuesday 15 January at 7pm
From the ancient story of Pygmalion to the more recent Henry Higgins,
the longing of ascetic ‘brainy’ men for unusual alluring women has been
a fertile theme. In his study of Gradiva Freud, the psycho-archaeologist,
saw this in the tale of Jensen’s scholar, and brilliantly examined his
belated, deranged desire. Kalu Singh develops the theme using Solaris
(the book and the film) with its astonishing visual correlate for the unconscious
– the communicating ocean under two suns.
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Exhibition Tour of Gradiva Project led by the artist William Cobbing |
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Hysteria and Film Evening Screenings and discussion Two accessible independent films, dealing in different ways with issues of hysteria, mass hysteria, femininity, and performance. Richard Squires Programme (29 min.) A video art drama documentary featuring Charcot, Salpêtrière, hypnosis, and hysteria. Carol Morley Madness of the Dance (20 min) A musical journey through mass hysteria and the “madness of normal people”, from the middle ages to the present day. Introduced by Forbes Morlock (Syracuse University) and followed by an open discussion with the two directors. |
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Jensen’s Gradiva and Hitchcock’s Vertigo: A delirium of the fetish Claire Pajaczkowska Alfred Hitchcock is the cinematic master of fetishism, but Jensen got there first with his story of a delusion woven around the fixation on a woman’s upturned foot. How does fetishism work in story and film, and just why are high heels sexy? Claire Pajaczkowska is Reader in Visual Culture at Middlesex University. Her latest publication, co-edited with Ivan Ward, is Shame and sexuality: Psychoanalysis and visual culture (2008) |
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Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis George Makari About his recent book Revolution in Mind, critics have said: “George Makari has written nothing less than a history of the modern mind. He has uncovered the philosophical, scientific, and historical ideas that revolutionized the way we think about our own mental processes.” - Paul Auster “This is a marvelous history which captures the passions and complexities of one of the most determined intellectual efforts of the twentieth-century.” - Jonathan Lear. George Makari is the Director of Cornell’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry and a faculty member of the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research at Columbia University. Born in 1960, he lives with his family in New York City. |