Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain

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When you rent one of our On Demand events, you will be able to watch it right away and stream the video anytime during the specified rental period. Why not puncture bafflement with playful speculation? Mulholland Drive proves surprisingly amenable to the dream logic explored by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, so let’s see where it takes us. 3. Andrea Sabbadini

Costume plays an important but under-recognised part in Lynch’s aesthetic. This talk will explore the distinctive contribution costume makes to Lynch’s oeuvre with a particular focus on Twin Peaks, showing how for Lynch, costume is more than just character and relates to his ongoing fascination with the curtain or veil. It will also playfully examine the influence Lynch’s work has had on fashion. With contributions from Olga Cox Cameron, Tamara Dellutri, Allister Mactaggart, Stefan Marianski, Richard Martin, Todd McGowan, Carol Owens, Chris Rodley, Jamie Ruers, Andrea Sabbadini, and Mary Wild. With contributions from scholars, psychoanalysts, cinephiles and filmmakers, this collection of essays explores potential affinities and disjunctions between Lynch and Freud. Encompassing themes such as art, identity, architecture, fantasy, dreams, hysteria and the unconscious, Freud/Lynch takes as its point of departure the possibility that the enterprise in which these two distinct investigators are engaged might in some sense be a shared one. Drawn from a major Freud Museum London conference, Freud/Lynch goes against the dubious cliché of finding Freudian solutions to Lynchian mysteries. Rather than presuming to fill in what Lynch leaves open by positing some forbidden psychosexual reality lurking behind his trademark red curtains, this book instead maintains a fidelity to the mysteries of his wonderful and strange filmic worlds, finding in them productive spaces where thought and imagination can be set to work. David Lynch is known for creating luxurious cinematic dreamscapes – infuriatingly beautiful mind puzzles in his signature surrealistic style. Three films in particular (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire) form his unofficial ‘blurred identity trilogy’, featuring characters who embark on bizarre inward journeys in search of lost selves. The central premise of this talk is that in each instalment of the trilogy, a psychogenic fugue follows the unconscious trauma of unrequited love. Psychoanalytic theory will be shown to illuminate Lynch’s iconic dream-logic, which is disturbing and beguiling in equal measure. 9. Allister MacTaggartPlacing the film alongside James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake as rare examples of artworks which succeed in reproducing dream logic and considering Freud’s 1900 dream theory in light the developments of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, this talk examines the film with reference to the question posed by Lacan in relation to Freud’s famous ‘Irma’ dream: given that the dream repeatedly comes up against something that provokes anxiety, what allows the dreamer to continue dreaming?

David Lynch is known for creating luxurious cinematic dreamscapes – infuriatingly beautiful mind puzzles in his signature surrealistic style. Three films in particular ( Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire) form his unofficial ‘blurred identity trilogy’, featuring characters who embark on bizarre inward journeys in search of lost selves. The central premise of this talk is that in each instalment of the trilogy, a psychogenic fugue follows the unconscious trauma of unrequited love. Psychoanalytic theory will be shown to illuminate Lynch’s iconic dream-logic, which is disturbing and beguiling in equal measure. Speakers’ Biographies Andrea Sabbadini is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and its former Director of Publications. He works in private practice in London, is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at University College London (UCL), a Consultant to the IPA in Culture Committee, the Founder Editor of the journal Psychoanalysis and History, the Director of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff) and a former trustee of the Freud Museum. His most recent books are Boundaries and Bridges: Perspectives on Time and Space in Psychoanalysis (Karnac 2014) and Moving Images: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Film (Routledge 2014). I shall consider from a psychoanalytic perspective how Blue Velvet, dominated as it is by perverse relationships, presents us with ‘a strange world’ (a sentence repeatedly uttered by two of the film’s protagonists). I shall here focus in particular on the theme of voyeurism, which also implicates us as spectators, and on the symbolic significance of the cut-off ear, the film’s iconic and emblematic MacGuffin. 4. Jamie Ruers Movement, Velocity, and Rhythm from a Psychoanalytic Perspective is a new collection out at the end of October, edited by Jessica Datema and Angie Voela. It examines how rituals of the body – varied in speed and rhythm – produce effects on the experience of subjectivity more widely. Rather than focus solely on the clinical, this collection combines psychoanalysis with art, philosophy, and popular culture to consider the place of ritualistic, embodied alternatives to the frenetic pace of modern life.I shall consider from a psychoanalytic perspective how Blue Velvet, dominated as it is by perverse relationships, presents us with ‘a strange world’ (a sentence repeatedly uttered by two of the film’s protagonists). I shall here focus in particular on the theme of voyeurism, which also implicates us as spectators, and on the symbolic significance of the cut-off ear, the film’s iconic and emblematic MacGuffin. This conference invites psychoanalysts, scholars and cinephiles to reflect on these Lynchian enigmas. What do we mean by ‘Lynchian’? Beyond the apparent incoherence of his films, are there hidden logics at play? Are Lynch and Freud in alignment? And what light can psychoanalysis shed on the Lynchian uncanny? Jamie has given talks on Viennese modernism and the Surrealists at the Freud Museum London, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and is featured on documentaries such as Art & Mind. She has published articles and essays on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art in The Art Newspaper, various Freud Museum publications, and artist monographs. This is her first edited book with hopefully many more to come.

Lynch, who once told an interviewer ‘I love dream logic’ would surely agree with Sigmund Freud’s famous claim that ‘before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms’. But what else might the two agree on? Cox Cameron finds in Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive a text replete with the mechanisms of the dream-work identified in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Yet if Mulholland Drive lends itself to Freudian dream-logic, it also invites us, with Lacan, to pose a series of questions on the relationship between the unconscious cipher and the magnetising power of trauma. Courtesy of Channel Four, I was able to begin making documentaries in 1983 and have been an independent filmmaker ever since. In the intervening 35 years I have produced and/or directed over 80 arts documentaries for television and contributed to over a dozen documentary series. These include award-winning films on Andy Warhol and Johnny Cash, as well as the series ‘The Genius of Photography’ and ‘This is Modern Art’. I first worked with David Lynch in 1993 while making a documentary about American independent cinema. In 1996 we began working on the book Lynch on Lynch, which was published in 1997 and has since been updated. I also worked extensively with the director David Cronenberg, making two documentaries about his work (one in 1986 and one in 1992) and well as editing the book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, based on years of recorded interviews. Unlike David Lynch, I don’t paint any more. He told me off about that. From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Why not puncture bafflement with playful speculation? Mulholland Drive proves surprisingly amenable to the dream logic explored by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, so let’s see where it takes us.

Speakers’ Biographies

Cox Cameron’s presentation will be prefaced with some introductory comments by the book’s editors, Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski. The weekend finished with a panel discussing and finding sense in The Return, which included Richard Martin, Todd McGowan, Allistair McTaggart and Tamara Dellutri who took questions from the audience. A transcript of this gripping panel discussion finishes the book.