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The (Lost) Vocal Object in Opera: The Voice, the Listener and Jouissance
(abstract)
Carlo Zuccarini



Chasing Perfection: Death Denial in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark"
(abstract)
Shona Tritt, Michael Tritt



Evil: A Psychoanalytic Meditation
(abstract)
Erik Nakjavani



From Ethereal Confrontation to Child Abuse to Womanly Conflict: Ophelia in Three Late-Twentieth Century Films
(abstract)
Dianne Hunter 



The Buried Life: Shadow and Anima in James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Jolly Corner”
(abstract)
Sandra S. Hughes



Three Austrian Filmmakers. A psychoanalytic view on works of Kurt Kren, Peter Tscherkassky and Martin Arnold.
(abstract)
Andreas Fraunberger



The Space Between Us All: A Developmental Study of the Beatles
(abstract)
Moskowitz



Swiss Cows and an English Poet: Empathic Nostalgia in a Sonnet of Wordsworth’s
(abstract)
Burton Melnick



Franz Kafka’s « The Metamorphosis » : A case study
(abstract)
Robert Silhol



Like two skins, one inside the other”: Dual Unity in Brokeback Mountain
(abstract)
David Willbern



Poetic Conventions as Fossilized Cognitive Devices; The Case of Mediaeval and Renaissance Poetics
(abstract)
Reuven Tsur



Time, Memory, and the “Uncertain I”: Transtemporal Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen’s Short Fiction
(abstract)
Doryjane A. Birrer



That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Boy: An Amazing Psychoanalytic Journey
(abstract)
Kathleen D. Colebank



Nachträglichkeit
(abstract)
Jacqueline Hamrit



A Post-Kleinian Model for Aesthetic Criticism
(abstract)
Meg Harris Williams



The Dramatic Presentation of Inner Turmoil: Shakespeare and John Berryman’s Dream Songs
(abstract)
Jay Peters



At a Loss for Words: Writer’s Block in Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice
(abstract)
Shersten Johnson





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“The (Lost) Vocal Object in Opera: The Voice, the Listener and Jouissance” by Carlo Zuccarini
This psychoanalytic exploration considers some aspects of Lacanian theory pertaining to the gaze and the voice and their relevance to opera, in particular the (lost) vocal object, as well as the erotic nature of the listener’s pleasure in response to the (soprano) voice. These aspects are discussed within the context of the various layers of opera (drama, music and singing) and specifically the way in which the individual elements of narrative, music and the voice relate to opera. The combined effect of these individual elements is discussed to arrive at a possible interpretation of the way in which the listener/audience relates to opera. The material presented here is largely based on and freely adapted from the author’s previous and ongoing research.
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keywords: voice, gaze, opera, psychoanalysis, jouissance
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_zuccarini01.shtml

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Chasing Perfection: Death Denial In Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The Birth-Mark” by Shona Tritt, Michael Tritt
This paper examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” from the perspective of Ernest Becker’s theory of Generative Death Anxiety, which proposes that much of human behavior is unconsciously generated to deflect consciousness and fear of death. Critics have characterized Aylmer as a man of his time, carried away by the idolization of science and/or as dominated by repressed fears of sexuality. Yet death anxiety more fundamentally explains the course and development of his scientific career and pursuits, the nature of his marriage relationship, and his fixation on his wife’s birthmark. Georgiana’s desperate desire to eradicate the mark (and the corporality it represents) derives from her own deep-seated anxieties about her mortality. Indeed, Aylmer and Georgiana’s determination to follow the experiment through to its tragic end can be viewed as an attempt symbolically to validate their human worth and meaning, notwithstanding the ephemeral nature of individual existence.
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url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_tritt01.shtml

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Evil: A Psychoanalytic Meditation by Erik Nakjavani 
Evil has preoccupied us throughout human history. By defining evil as the aggregate of acts that is intended to cause harm, suffering, and finally death to a particular mode of sentient life, I attempt to rethink the problematic of evil. I locate the causality of evil at the crossroads of the dual Freudian concepts of life and death instincts. From a psychoanalytic perspective, I propose that evil in lived human experience issues forth from gradual unfolding of the “work of the negative” initiated and sustained by the death instinct, with the absolute final triumph of death instinct over life instinct or Thanatos over Eros.
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url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_nakjavani01.shtml

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From Ethereal Confrontation to Child Abuse to Womanly Conflict: Ophelia in Three Late-Twentieth Century Films by Dianne Hunter  

     
Kate Winslet plays the mad Ophelia as a late-nineteenth-century-style Bedlam hysteric, Helena Bonham-Carter plays her as a victim of emotional double-binding and sexual trauma, Marianne Faithfull plays her as a drugged, rebellious youth who deploys her musical voice and 60s pop icon status as confrontation.  The Hamlets who appear as their male counterparts are respectively, a spurned but dignified prince (Kenneth Branagh), an angry action hero (Mel Gibson), and an aging graduate student (Nicol Williamson).   These six performances can be seen to represent redefinitions of gender consonant with changes in cultural history between the 1960s and the 1990s in the English-speaking world.
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keywords: Bonham-Carter, Branagh, Casting, Cultural History, Faithfull, Gender, Image, Madness, Performance, Representation, Richardson, Sexuality, Winslet, Zeffirelli.
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_hunter01.shtml

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The Buried Life: Shadow and Anima in James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Jolly Corner” by Sandra S. Hughes 
This essay offers a Jungian reading of “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Jolly Corner,” suggesting that James’s tales dramatize the processes of integrating repressed materials of the unconscious into the conscious mind, with the following results: the final note sounded by “The Beast in the Jungle” is one of despair, as the scene depicts a painful, permanent separation of John Marcher from his anima; in contrast, “The Jolly Corner” ends with a mutual affirmation on the part of Spencer Brydon and his anima figure, Alice Staverton. Unlike John Marcher, Spencer Brydon has come to his realization just in time.
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url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_hughes01.shtml

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Poetic Conventions as Fossilized Cognitive Devices; The Case of Mediaeval and Renaissance Poetics by Andreas Fraunberger

I present the works of three central figures of the Austrian avant-garde film movement. The works of these figures will be analyzed from the perspective of the possibility of expression of the unconscious mind in the film medium. Hence, the main point of this project is the application of the metapsychological model of Freudian theory and subsequent theories to the film theory.

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keywords: Psychoanalysis, Filmtheory, Avant-Garde Film.
SYNEMA, Österreichische Gesellschaft für Filmtheorie. Vienna 2008.
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_fraunberger01.shtml

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article 081102
Swiss Cows and an English Poet: Empathic Nostalgia in a Sonnet of Wordsworth’s by Burton Melnick
The traditional Swiss cowherds’ melody called the “Ranz des Vaches” has been famous for centuries for its uncanny ability to evoke extreme nostalgia. This paper analyzes a sonnet of Wordsworth’s about his encounter with the “Ranz” in Switzerland in 1820. It examines both the statement and the poetic functioning of the sonnet, comparing it to Wordsworth’s better known “The Solitary Reaper.” The sonnet, I argue, reveals something of the mechanism by which we manage to identify with and empathize with the Other, even while hinting at the inherent limitations of that mechanism. The paper proposes, in passing, an explanation of the mysterious evocativeness of the “Ranz des Vaches,” and also asks whether Wordsworth’s sonnet, which has been criticized as particularly unevocative, might not require a special kind of reading, grounded in that very mechanism for relating to the Other that is the theme of the poem.
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keywords:Wordsworth, “Ranz des Vaches,” identification, the Other, poetry
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_melnick01.shtml

author info:
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article 081026
Like two skins, one inside the other”: Dual Unity in Brokeback Mountain by David Willbern  

     By focusing on the specific language of Annie Proulx’s story – with some references to the Ang Lee film – I speculate that the sources of imaginative production (writing) and popular reception (reading) lie in memories and evocations of early (infantile) emotional life. Using concepts from object-relations psychoanalysis, I argue that the deepest texture of unconscious experience in Brokeback Mountain links to preverbal life, evoked in the story by metaphors of bodily images and sensations: smells, noises, warmth, coldness, and intimate embrace. I suggest that the extraordinary popularity of both story and film is anchored in this matrix of pre-oedipal, universal, human experience -- beyond sexuality, straight or gay.
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keywords: sexuality, homosexuality, homophobia, fantasy, wish, nostalgia, pastoral, pleasure principle, reality principle, dual unity, symbiosis, transitional object, separation, individuation, closet, mourning, Freud, Mahler, Winnicott, Loewald.
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_willbern01.shtml

author info:
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article 080921
Poetic Conventions as Fossilized Cognitive Devices; The Case of Mediaeval and Renaissance Poetics by Reuven Tsur

      In mediaeval and Renaissance poetry the use of genres is conventional. The first person singular is frequently regarded as a rhetorical device rather than as evidence of personal experience. We should not, therefore, take for granted that we have explained the poet's subjective experience by the application of some psychological theory. I adopt, rather, Ehrenzweig's conception regarding the defense mechanisms with the help of which human society protects itself against the expressive force of artistic devices and turns them into style, that is, harmless ornament. From Roy D'Andrade I adopt the notion that in the pro­cess of repeated social transmission, cultural programs [viz. poetic conventions] take forms that fit the natural capacities and constraints of the brain. In light of this model I explore the convention of catalogues of contradictions. Finally, I explore varieties of poetic effects resulting from aesthetic manipulations of these catalogues of contradictions.
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keywords: Genre conventions, "Biographical Fallacy", expressive devices fossilized, leveling-and-sharpening, catalogue of contradictions, ambivalence, Mediaeval poetry, Renaissance poetry, al-Mutanabi, Ibn Ezra, Petrarch, Villon, Alain Chartier, Wiatt, Drayton, Ronsard
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_tsur01.shtml

author info:
Reuven Tsur tsurxx@post.tau.ac.il

Hebrew Literature
Tel Aviv University

Ramat Aviv 69978
Tel Aviv P.O.B. 39040 ISRAEL

article 080922
Time, Memory, and the “Uncertain I”: Transtemporal Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen’s Short Fiction by Doryjane A. Birrer

      Key to the psychological realism of Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction is her insight into human subjectivity via depictions of what I term "transtemporal subjectivity": the destabilized "I" as existing in a fluid realm comprised simultaneously of past (memory), present (experience), and future (expectation), accessed both consciously and unconsciously, predictably and unpredictably by each individual. Bowen's fiction thus imaginatively enacts and extends visions of subjectivity explored in the concept of nachträglichkeit or "deferred action" as established by Freud and developed by psychoanalytic theorists Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok and literary critic Peter Nicholls. Drawing on this psychological concept, as well as on Abraham and Torok's metapsychological discussion of Reality versus reality, this essay argues that Bowen's psychological realism and representations of transtemporal subjectivity comprise a vision of the human subject that, though not necessarily comfortable, offers increased scope for human agency in a radically destabilized social world.
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keywords: nachträglichkeit, Freud, Abraham and Torok, subjectivity, Elizabeth Bowen, psychological realism
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_birrer01.shtml

author info:
Doryjane A. Birrer  birrerd@cofc.edu
English Department
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC

article 080715
That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Boy: An Amazing Psychoanalytic Journey by Kathleen D. Colebank

      Freud pioneered psychoanalysis as his method for investigating the conscious and unconscious psychic apparatus. Psychoanalysis is an avenue by which the analyst can explore the individual’s compromises and conflicts in adaptation to the demands of social order. Freud, in his analyses of Jensen’s Gradiva ((1907), Leonardo’s childhood memoir (1910), and Michelangelo’s Moses (1914) used literature and art to expand the theoretical concepts of psychoanalysis to include civilization and culture at large. This paper uses the libretto of a modern rock opera, The Who’s Tommy (1969), to examine the sources of Tommy Walker’s intrapsychic alienation, his memories and affect, and the translation of his emotional communication. Modern Freudian psychoanalytic thought is employed to address the challenges and opportunities the analyst experiences when the preverbal, pre-oedipal analysand has incorporated the directive: You won’t say nothing to no one. Never tell a soul what you know is the truth! (The Who, 1969)
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keywords: Need
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_colebank01.shtml

author info:
Kathleen D. Colebank, M.Ed., NCPsyA Need Address

School/Employer?

Address

article 080716
Nachträglichkeit by Jacqueline Hamrit  

      In this paper, I show that Derrida is indebted to psychoanalysis as the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit (translated into English by Jones as 'deferred action) is central to Derridean concepts, such as 'Différance'. To do so, I first define the notion of Nachträglichkeit through its etymologies, its appearances in Freud's texts, its translations, and its relationship with the issue of trauma. In a second part, I study the role played by the notion in Derrida's concepts by referring to two essays written by Derrida, i.e. "Freud and the Scene of Writing", published first in 1966 and then in Writing and Difference in 1967, and "Différance", published in 1968. In a third part, I apply the notion to a literary text which deals with psychopathology, namely Nabokov's novel, Lolita which is about a case of sexual perversion - paedophilia.
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keywords:Freud, Derrida, Nachträglichkeit, Différance, trauma, _Lolita_, sexual perversion
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_hamrit01.shtml

author info:
Jacqueline Hamrit Jacqueline.hamrit@univ-lille3.fr

Université Charles de Gaulle- Lille3 (France)

4, allée du millénaire
59700 Marcq-en-Baroeul
France

article 080330
A Post-Kleinian Model for Aesthetic Criticism by Meg Harris Williams  

      This paper presents a piece of writing by the Kleinian art critic Adrian Stokes as a model for aesthetic criticism in general. First the limits of psychoanalytic interpretation are considered, with regard to the definition of an ‘art symbol’ made by the philosopher of aesthetics Susanne Langer. The problem formulated by Langer is the irreducibility of the meaning in an artwork. Then Stokes is used as an example of the type of psychoanalytically informed writing that is not reductive but aesthetic and, it is suggested, a species of artwork in its own right. Stokes demonstrates there is room for the critic’s verbal creativity through immersing the ego in the artwork and identifying with the artistic process it embodies. Finally this is related to recent developments in post-Kleinian theory that value the artistic and intuitive features of clinical analytic practice, in particular regarding the transference-countertransference relationship.
 
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keywords: Kleinian interpretation, criticism, aesthetics, art-symbol identification, counter- transference, Wilfred Bion, Susanne Langer, Donald Meltzer, Adrian Stokes
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_williams01.shtml

author info:
Meg Harris Williams meghwilliams@tiscali.co.uk

The Bourne, Redlands Lane, Crondall


Farnham, Surrey GU10 5RF
UK


article 080329
The Dramatic Presentation of Inner Turmoil: Shakespeare and John Berryman’s Dream Songs by Jay Peters  

      This paper examines John Berryman's Dream Songs from a psychoanalytic perspective. The paper formulates a means of discussing three factors that impinge on Henry's construction of himself: the heteroglossic nature of thought one's relationship to power and one's relationship to the metaphysical. Though other major mid-century "confessional" poets (such as Bishop and Lowell) had developed ways of interiorizing the modernist poetics of Eliot, Williams and Pound, the main lens through which the paper examines the interiorizing poetics of the Dream Songs is Shakespeare's tragic period, which Berryman had studied closely his entire career. Berryman found in Shakespeare's tragedies not only a means of dramatizing one's relationship to power and to God, but also the use of dramatic dialogue to represent an individual mind.
 
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keywords: Shakespeare, Berryman, Dream Songs, suicide, fratricide, tyranny, oppression, heteroglossia, religion
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_peters01.shtml

author info:
Jay Peters jaypeters@cox.net

Writing, Literature and Publishing Department


Emerson College
Boston, MA


article 080302
At a Loss for Words: Writer's Block in Britten's Death in Venice by Shersten Johnson  

      Based on Thomas Mann's story about an aging novelist's fateful obsession with an adolescent boy, Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice artfully dramatizes Mann's story of repressed sexuality masked as creative inhibition. Aschenbach's introductory monologue, beginning "My mind beats on and no words come,” alludes to the psychosexual roots of his dilemma. The music itself even sounds blocked, as do his words, which not only describe his problem, but also are inhibited syntactically and semantically. In order to discover how music and text blend to portray Aschenbach's writer's block, this article examines the opening monologue using a combination of tools: musical-theoretical and grammatical, to discern how Aschenbach's block "structures" the music and text; psychoanalytical, to uncover the causes of his crippling inhibition; and cognitive-linguistic, to ground the analysis in certain conceptual blends that permeate notions of creativity, sexuality, language, and music in this opera.
 
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keywords: Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Conceptual Blending, Opera, Benjamin Britten, Thomas Mann, Lawrence Zbikowski, Creativity, Homoeroticism, Der Tod in Venedig
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_johnso01.shtml

author info:
Shersten Johnson srjohnson2@stthomas.edu

Assistant Professor of Music Theory


University of St. Thomas
2115 Summit Avenue BEC 09
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55105 · USA


1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

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