Author Archives: PsyArt

By: Shirley Sharon-Zisser Abstract: This article considers Carlo Collodi’s classic, The Adventures of Pinocchio, in terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis and the theoretical developments of French psychoanalyst Michèle Montrelay. While offering a Lacanian account of Pinocchio’s tribulations, its major purpose is not to add to the store of usually anodyne psychoanalytic mappings of Collodi’s plot, butContinue reading “Lying Through One’s Nose: On Masculine Sexuality and Deception in Collodi’s Pinocchio”

By: Nicolette David Abstract: This article proposes a Kleinian re-working of Freud’s “The Uncanny” through an exploration of Arthur Schnitzler’s “Flowers” and Dream Story, works in which female figures appear to return from the dead to persecute the living. It argues that these women may be seen to be animated by Melanie Klein’s insights intoContinue reading ““And the dead return”: Klein and the “Uncanny” in Schnitzler’s “Flowers” and Dream Story”

By: Frank Stringfellow Abstract: Тhis intertextual, psychoanalytic study shows that, on the basis of deep-structural similarities between Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and Shaw’s Pygmalion, Pygmalion appears to be an unconscious rewriting of Rosmersholm, with Shaw turning Ibsen’s tragedy of repression into his own comedy of repression. Ibsen’s play, which shows the failure of repression/sublimation to contain eroticContinue reading “Pygmalion: Shaw’s Psychic Flight from Rosmersholm”

By: Yael Greenberg Abstract: In this paper, I offer a psychoanalytic reading of the biblical narratives of Joseph, Moses, and Saul that demonstrates the biblical authors’ deep knowledge of the unconscious. In each one of these narratives, the protagonist’s unconscious feelings, resulting from family dynamics, are displaced onto society. This displacement is presented by interweavingContinue reading “The Presentation of the Unconscious in Three Biblical Narratives”

By: Gary Genosko Abstract: This article analyzes the important role played by hypnosis in Jeff Vandermeer’s novel Annihilation. It then asks what becomes of hypnosis in the film adaptation of the novel by director Alex Garland as it appears to play no role. It is maintained that hypnosis appears in the film but it isContinue reading “Hypnosis Under Erasure: Two Annihilations”

By: Robert E. Lougy Abstract: Unlike the symbols found in folk-lore and fairy tales, Freud argues that “dreams symbols are used almost exclusively for the expression of sexual objects and relations.” Dreamers, Freud argues, draw upon an ancient language within their unconscious and thus have a mode of expression at their disposal which they doContinue reading “Strange Creative Gifts and Freud’s “The Symbolism of Dreams””

By: Shana Sanusi Abstract: Figures of vengeful female ghosts are commonly visualized in Asian horror cinema as an allegorical response to patriarchal injustice. Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom’s Shutter (2004) utilizes this trope by highlighting the psychological subjectivity of the central protagonist Tun as he deals with the loss of a love-object while sustaining aContinue reading “Narcissism, Melancholia and the Manifestation of Suffering in Shutter”

By: Geoffrey A. Wright Abstract: My essay examines shame and its relation to combat trauma in two memoirs by Iraq War veterans: John Crawford’s The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell (2005) and Brian Turner’s My Life as a Foreign Country (2014). I analyze the nature of shame in these texts, that is, what itContinue reading “The Anatomy of Shame: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of the Self in Iraq War Memoirs”

By: Jonathan F. Bassett Abstract: This paper explores existential themes as presented in the 2014 film The Amazing Spider-Man 2. An initial argument is presented in support of the claim that contemporary audiences are drawn towards superheroes for the same reasons people have historically been compelled by traditional religious beliefs – a desire to transcendContinue reading “(Super)Heroism as a Response to the Awareness of Death:Existential Lessons From The Amazing Spider-Man 2”

By: Daniel Brennan Abstract: This paper explores the strikingly similar use of psychoanalytic imagery in the films Psycho and The Lady in the Van. The paper argues that the latter film is a deconstruction of the former’s political aims. Where Psycho uses psychoanalytic imagery to warn of the danger that strong female autonomy poses toContinue reading “The Lady in the Van and the Challenge to Psycho; On the Political Uses of Psychoanalytic Imagery in Film”