THE VIENNA PSYCHOANALYST wants to give not only already internationally established psychoanalysts, but also still unknown psychoanalysts the opportunity to post a self-written and not yet published article on the FrontPage of our online magazine!
Our Users then can leave comments, ask questions or discuss the articles in our forum. Our aim is to provide an international platform where for the first time anyone interested in psychoanalysis can exchange ideas on certain topics.
Articles are welcome in German and/ or English.
If you are interested, please send your article to
leadingarticle@theviennapsychoanalyst.at
(For reasons of readability, the male form is used with personal names, however the female form is also always intended.)
In Part II, Dany Nobus discusses the Bloomsbury Group, the psychoanalytic tradition (or lack thereof) in the United Kingdom, Shakespeare and the status quo of mental health services.
When did psychoanalysis arrive in Britain?
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William Shakespeare and Sigmund Freud.
“Everywhere I go, a poet has been here before me” (Sigmund Freud)
No analysis will ever do justice to the scope and literary brilliance with which William Shakespeare illustrated the depths of the human condition. His iambic pentameter, or blank verse, is said to mimic the rhythm of the human heartbeat. The key to understanding his plays is empathy as the famous playwright had a profound and unsurpassed understanding of the human psyche - a gift that inspired both great admiration and ambivalence in Sigmund Freud.
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"I am faithful to memories forever; to people I shall never be faithful"
The countless (1539!) as well as entertaining letters Freud sent to Martha Bernay still enjoy great popularity after their publication in 2011. They shed some light on a different side of Freud that didn’t quite correspond to the popular image. Here, the usually so serious psychoanalyst flirts, compliments and woos his beloved.
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The famous author Edgar Allan Poe continues to be courted by psychoanalysts across the field´s spectrum. The princess, Marie Bonaparte, herself has written an enthusiastic 700-page psychobiography of the writer with “pathological tendencies” (Freud), Edgar Poe, étude psychanalytique (1933). >> continue
"Freud is upsetting: reducing one to whirlpool; & I daresay truly. If we´re all instinct, the unconscious, whats all this about civilisation, the whole man, freedom &c?” Virginia Woolf was in two minds about psychoanalysis which she perceived not only as threat and competition, but also as reference point. Perhaps Freud´s rational observations of the mind were too close to comfort for the troubled storyteller.
When Freud met Virginia Woolf she was still resisting the raison d´être of psychoanalysis and described the doctor as “a screwed up shrunk very old man” who seemed “inarticulate: but alert”, “an old fire now flickering” with “immense potential”. This ambivalence would remain at the center of Virginia Woolf´s stance on psychoanalysis. The field was too rational, too objectified for the author´s romanticized approach to her work and self-image. To Freud, creativity was not an abstract concept but strongly linked to an artist´s biography. He took the mystery, the unexplained out of the equation and instead tried to interpret the underlying motives of the creative processes. It knocked the artist´s persona off its pedestal and, consequently, the impact wounded the egos of not a few writers. After all, the truth is rarely as exciting as the eccentric stories artists tend to weave around their lives. Virginia Woolf, however, was not only the victim of her own ego: "Virginia´s need to write was, among other things, to make sense out of mental chaos and gain control of madness. Through her novels she made her inner world less frightening. Writing was often agony but it provided the ´strongest pleasure´ she knew" (Psychiatrist Peter Dally, 1999)
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Les années folles. Interwar Paris became a meeting and trysting place for “the lost generation” that laid the groundwork for the modernist movement. Concepts of the subject, the narrative of the self, classicism and sexuality were at the heart of the zeitgeist that influenced psychoanalysis, and vice versa. Hemingway’s iceberg theory represented a new way of thinking in a time of upheaval and transition. >> continue
Dear Readers!
THE VIENNA PSYCHOANALYST is pleased to present today the first article written by our editor Sabrina Zehetner.
Enjoy reading!
In an age of political conflicts and intense, public scrutiny on the internet, satire as Enfant Terrible has become ubiquitous. Looking back on a long history of ridicule and political dissent, satire - like psychoanalysis - discusses social taboos and human agency – satire on the couch.
Satire 2.0
The John Oliver Show, SNL, The Stephen Colbert Report, The Onion und Kate Beaton’s cartoons, the New Yorker and Charlie Hebdo – the list of modern satire is inexhaustible and multifaceted while the satirists’ motives are as diverse as their targets. It is not surprising that satire as a genre – as is the case with the majority of European cultural history – happens to be another child of ancient Greek poetry. At the English court, it was aristocrats such as the notorious John Wilmot (The 2nd Earl of Rochester) who could afford making fun of English royalty and its lifestyle. In its obscenity, however, these satirical works were in no way inferior to their modern successors. In France, the birthplace of the caricature, satirists the likes of Charles Philipon faced imprisonment for expressing dissent and criticizing royal agency. Later, during the French revolution, the genre played a significant role in empowering citizens through political engagement. As the court ceased to be the cultural center and the readership became increasingly heterogeneous, satire evolved into an independent art form. Finally part of the mainstream media, satire enjoyed great popularity and regular publication. The golden age of grand-scale satire written by the likes of Swift, Pope or Molière belongs to the past and gave way to Memes and Late-night-TV. In the digital age, where politicians find themselves under public scrutiny 24/7, leaders present the perfect target for satirists – paradoxically, the virtual reality both demands and persecutes authenticity. Good satire combines humor with informed critique. An audience only derives pleasure from satire when the irony is understood as such – if not due to opposing political views or misleading social critique, the genre ceases to be effective and even runs the risk of representing the very thing it set out to criticize. Why do we derive pleasure from an art form known for its obscenity and hostility? A number of modern critics refer to Freud, according to whom, the sadistic pleasure is gained through rhetoric violence while others link the release of aggression to the source of pleasure. Surprisingly, psychoanalysis has never properly addressed satire despite its topicality.
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Dear Readers!
Unfortunately due to scheduling reasons, Prof. Alfred Pritz was unable to release his article.
"It is postponed but not canceled!"
THE VIENNA PSYCHOANALYST therefore is glad to present an article of its editor Désirée Prosquill.
We hope you are not too disappointed in this change of plans and we hope you will still enjoy the new article.
In this article, you can read about the relationship between Felix Salten, the author of "Bambi. A Life in the Woods", and Sigmund Freud.
For a week, the author too will be available in the forum for questions and discussions.
Kind regards
DWP
Felix Salten and Sigmund Freud
The article, which Felix Salten wrote in the journal Neue Freie Presse on January 1st, 1925, is chronologically considered the first evidence that Salten knew of Sigmund Freud for sure and that he had at least roughly knowledge of his theories.
“In future, when world history is not written after the bloody wars, but according to the intellectual achievements of the people, it must be, that neither the Marne battle nor the battle of Tannenberg, but the theories of Freud, Einstein´s theory, the research results of Steinach, the invention of insulin as great victories praised. Then one will be able to measure in such findings and achievements, such as the airplane or the radio, the growth of human power, in such events one will be told the history of mankind. Then one will be able to call the first quarter of the twentieth century a great time, or at least one can say that it was the interesting start of a new great era." {Salten, Felix: in: NFP vom 1.1.1925, S. 2. Morgenblatt.}
Even though Beverley Driver Eddy indicates without further explanation in her book, that Salten had only a "passing interest" {Eddy, Beverley Driver: Felix Salten: Man of Many Faces. 2010 Ariadne Press. S. 152.} in Freud’s theories, this passage nevertheless shows how highly Felix Salten thought about the Freudianism at that time, in fact so highly that he even uses them in the first place in the ranking of the "modern miracles".
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