Date: Friday, May 27th
Time: 7pm
Admission: $12
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn NY
Tickets Here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2513403
Tonight, join Dr. Ray O Neill - writer, psychoanalyst, and witty Irishman - for a lecture illustrating how Freud, Dalí and Lacans theories on psychoanalysis, surrealism, and representation, all mediate the narcissistic double which Freud defines as the uncanny harbinger of death, contrasted with an illustrated lecture by Claire-Madeline Culkin on mourning and sexuality via a psychoanalytic lens on the work of Nan Goldin. Freuds 1922 paper, Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality moved psychoanalytic discourse beyond narcissism as the bedrock for homo-sexual desires, arguing paranoia as another cause. This was the first paper of Freuds Lacan officially translated in 1932 utilising Freuds theories for his doctoral research, investigated homo-doublings and homo-sexuality within paranoid structures, delusions and manifestations. Just as Freud universalised homosexual unconscious wishes, so Lacan normalises paranoid delusions, not as false meanings but personal ones, psychical functions of representation. Both Freud and Lacan would attract the attention of Dalí precisely because of these theorisations on paranoia, narcissism, ideal-egos, with not a little sublimated homosexuality being informed. Dalís Metamorphosis of Narcissus illustrates these psychoanalytic queries, motivated consciously and unconsciously by Dalís own personal questions, paranoia and sexuality which converged around his own actual double, the original Other Salvador Dalí, his dead older brother.
Claire-Madeline Culkin will present an essay titled Beds Bodies, and Other Books of Common Prayer in which she explores the work of mourning in sexuality through a close analysis of the photographs of famed photographer Nan Goldin. Known for her unapologetically honest portraiture, Goldins The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and the subject of this essay, provides a lens into a personal moment the destruction of a destructive relationship set in the context of a cultural moment the height of both the gay-rights movement and the AIDS epidemic that centered on the convergence of sexuality and loss. Using psychoanalytic theory to discuss the structures in these photographs, and the narratives they frame, Claire-Madeline explores the constituting function of loss in the organization of human relationships and the human psyche.
This event is part of a series exploring the intersection, integration and application of psychoanalytic theory, the arts, and the occult, curated by psychoanalyst, Dr. Vanessa Sinclair. Throughout the series, Sinclair hosts a variety of psychoanalysts, psychologists, artists, writers, and occultists from a range of backgrounds and theoretical orientations. Presenters discuss their work, personal experience and areas of research interest, opening up a dialogue between practitioners in fields of study that rarely have a chance to engage with one another yet often operate in similar and complementary ways.
Claire-Madeline is an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College in their Non-Fiction program. Her work equal parts personal narrative, theoretical analysis, and criticism aims to reconcile the artifice of theory with the reality of lived experience by using her subjectivity means of approaching her subject matter. Beds, Bodies, and Other Books of Common Prayer was previously presented at the Das Unbehagen sponsored conference, Psychoanalysis on Ice in Iceland. A detailed description of her creative and professional work, can be found on her website www.clairemadelineculkin.squarespace.com. There, you can also find ways to be in touch. She loves hearing stories of the personal mythologies of ones birth, crises survived, and all the ways to fall out of love, so dont be a stranger.
Dr. Ray O Neill MA, MSc, MPhilis an Irish writer and psychoanalytic psychotherapist working in private practice in Dublin, Ireland. As Irelands only resident male Agony Aunt, Ray works significantly (and sometimes with significance) with the media in discoursing love, relationships, and desire in the 21st century. Current research includes explorations of the inter-relations between contemporary desire and technology; and that transmission of trauma across generations, with particular emphasis on the Irish experience.
Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. She is a founding member of Das Unbehagen: A Free Association for Psychoanalysis, which facilitates psychoanalytic lectures, classes and events in and around New York City. She contributes to various publications including The Fenris Wolf (Edda Publishing), DIVISION/Review: A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum, and the Brooklyn Rail.
Tickets are non-refundable unless the event is canceled.
