39th International Conference on Psychology and the Arts

When

June 21, 2023 - June 24, 2023

Event Type

Past Events

Welcome
Overview
Preliminary Conference Outline
Papers
Student Fellowships
Registration Fees & Payment
Accommodation
Travel
About Florence
Program
Abstracts

The 39th International Conference on Psychology and the Arts

Montedomini, Florence, Italy, June 21—June 24, 2023

Sponsored by The PsyArt Foundation

Welcome

We are pleased to announce that the 39th International Conference on Psychology and the Arts will be held at Il Fuligno – CSF Montedomini, Via Faenza, 48, 50123, Florence, Italy, June 21—June 24, 2023. Montedomini is a Franciscan establishment with a rich history that dates back to 1464. Montedomini operates in the field of social-health, educational and rehabilitation assistance for the elderly and disabled, both in residential and home care, and in the provision of educational services in favor of active inclusion (www.montedomini.net). The conference is sponsored and hosted by The PsyArt Foundation (www.psyart.org).

Image by Super MTDM: http://epigrafinascoste.blogspot.com/2016/02/educatorio-della-ss-concezione
-detto-di.html

Overview

The organizers of PsyArt 2023 invite 150-word abstracts for papers dealing with any application of psychology—including psychoanalysis, object relations, feminist, Jungian, or Lacanian approaches, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience—to the study of literature, film and visual media, painting, sculpture, music, performance, or the other arts. The conference is convivial and draws scholars from around the world. We also warmly welcome conferees who do not present papers. A maximum of 65 papers will be accepted for presentation.

Abstract submissions: deadline for abstract submissions is May 5, 2023.

Registration fees: regular registration fees are due by May 12, 2023. Late registration fees are due by May 19, 2023. Late registration fees will NOT be accepted after May 19, 2023.

Note: the calculated conference registration fees are based on US dollar (USD) to euro (EUR) exchange rates calculated at the time this program was built in December 2022. These exchange rates fluctuate, so the prices will have slight variations at the time of your registration. USD represents the fixed price for registration fees. EUR represents the fixed price for hotel accommodation.

Your registration fee includes the following benefits:

Opening reception at the Machiavelli Palace Hotel: https://www.hotelmachiavelli.it/
Attendance at all panel sessions
Coffee breaks supplied by I Dolci De Patrizio Cosi: http://www.pasticceriacosifirenze.it/
Closing banquet at The Hotel Brunelleschi: https://www.hotelbrunelleschi.it/

Refund Policy

Refunds will be given up to 7 days before the start of the event, i.e., June 14, 2023. After this date, no refunds will be given.

For questions or assistance, reach out to the following organizers:

Paavo Manninen

Vice President, The PsyArt Foundation: paavo.t.manninen@jyu.fi.

Marcie Newton

Treasurer, The PsyArt Foundation: mnewton@albany.edu

Antal Bokay

Secretary, The PsyArt Foundation: antal.bokay@gmail.com

Preliminary Conference Outline

Wednesday, June 21

Welcome evening reception, 18:00 – 20:00 hrs., rooftop terrace at The Machiavelli Palace Hotel.

Thursday, June 22

Opening of the conference in the morning; plenary speaker presentation; morning and afternoon parallel panel sessions.

Friday, June 23

Morning and afternoon parallel sessions; Directors’ meeting (PsyArt Directors only) in the late afternoon.

Saturday, June 24

Morning parallel sessions; Members’ meeting in the afternoon and group photos. Closing banquet in the evening at the Brunelleschi Hotel, renowned for its exquisite cuisine.

Sunday, June 25

Departure or optional full-day post-conference bus tour of the Tuscany landscapes: Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa (not included in registration fee).

Papers

Papers should be short, 20 minutes at most. Please observe the time limit. Normal speaking rate is 140 words per minute, and, for clarity, a scholarly presentation should be somewhat slower for the purpose of speaking at the pace of audience comprehension. Please try to limit or avoid jargon. Our standard 20-minute limit allows you to speak about 2400 words or eight to ten pages maximum. An additional ten minutes are allotted for discussion of each paper, usually at the end of the session. The moderator is responsible for keeping speakers to 20 minutes. The moderator speaks last, and it is therefore in his/her/their interest to maintain the schedule.

Note: if there are co-presenters, each presenter must pay the registration fee.

English is the conference language. We recommend that any speakers who are not native speakers of English accompany their talks with a PowerPoint presentation.

Following the conference, please consider submitting your paper to the PsyArt Journal for publication.

Please prepare an abstract, 150 words maximum. The deadline for sending the abstract is May 5, 2023. Send your abstract to PsyArt Vice-President, Paavo Manninen, at paavo.t.manninen@jyu.fi. If your abstract is accepted, an acceptance letter and registration details will follow.

Student Fellowships

The PsyArt Foundation is offering two fellowships:

1. Norman and Jane Holland Travel Fellowship of $500 / €471 for outstanding graduate student papers (prior to completing the Ph.D.). These can be awarded only once per person, but you can apply every year until you win. To be considered for a fellowship, please send your conference abstract by April 14, 2023, to the PsyArt Vice-President, Paavo Manninen, at paavo.t.manninen@jyu.fi. Please send your conference paper after your abstract is accepted. No recommendations are necessary.

Please note: We do not accept co-written papers for fellowship submissions.

In memory of our longtime Vice President, Andrew Gordon, the PsyArt Foundation also offers one Andrew Gordon Fellowship of $500 / €471 for Ph.D. students who are participating at the conference for the first time. Allocation of fellowship is on a first-come, first-served basis. A supporting letter from the supervisor is necessary. To be considered for a fellowship, send your conference abstract and supporting letter by April 14, 2023, to the PsyArt Vice-President, Paavo Manninen, at paavo.t.manninen@jyu.fi.

Please note: We do not accept co-written papers for fellowship submissions.

Registration Form 2023

The deadline for sending us your title and abstract is May 5, 2023, or when we have 65 accepted abstracts, registration forms, and registration fees, whichever comes sooner. Once you receive notice that your abstract is accepted, you will be notified and can then pay your fees to be assured a place at the conference.

For each person attending the conference, please fill out a separate online form and pay the registration fee. Please indicate clearly “No Paper” if that is the case. Otherwise indicate the title and abstract below.

For a complete registration, we require three items:

A completed registration form (see below) including paper title.
Brief abstract of paper (150 words maximum), if you are giving a paper. These abstracts enable us to decide if your paper is acceptable for the conference and then to place your paper in an appropriate session. We also publish them online.
A registration fee. See registration payment details below.

Important:

Ensure your email address is typed correctly to receive a response. If, by May 19, 2023, you are not receiving e-mails from us, let us know.
Do not assume that some currency arrangement you made the previous year is still effective.
Do not leave your registration for someone else to complete unless you are a guest, i.e., a child under 18, friend, or family member attending as a non-presenter.
Ensure that we have your complete registration (all three items) and your correct e-mail address. Fill out a separate form and pay for each person attending.

Registration Fees & Payment

To register, click here. U.S. and non-U.S. registrants will be taken to our PsyArt account at Eventbrite.com. (Note: if you plan to present a paper, it must first be submitted for acceptance to the PsyArt Vice-President, Paavo Manninen, at paavo.t.manninen@jyu.fi.)

The conference registration fee is based on the current 0.94 exchange rate from USD to EUR in December 2022. These exchange rates fluctuate so the euro price will have slight variations at the time of registration.

$325 (USD) / €306 (EUR), plus processing fee. Amount includes reception, conference bag, panel sessions, coffee breaks, and banquet. It excludes optional post-conference excursion.
$250 (USD) / €236 (EUR), plus processing fee. Amount excludes banquet and optional post-conference excursion.
$200 (USD) / €189 (EUR) for graduate students, plus processing fee. Amount includes reception, conference bag, panel sessions, coffee breaks, and banquet. . It excludes optional post-conference excursion.
$125 (USD) / €118 (EUR) for graduate students, plus processing fee. Amount excludes banquet and optional post-conference excursion.
$75 (USD) / €71 (EUR) for guests, plus processing fee, i.e., children under 18 of conferees; and partners, friends, or family wishing to attend only on June 24, 2023, plus processing fee. Amount includes reception and banquet only. It excludes optional post-conference excursion.
$150 (USD) / €139 (EUR) add-on: Optional post-conference excursion. Cost includes a 10-hour excursion around Tuscany, including guided tours of Siena and San Gimignano, lunch, and wine tasting in Chianti.

$25 of the conference registration fee is a non-refundable tax-deductible donation to the PsyArt Foundation, which supports the conference, the journal, and the listserv. If you require a refund, it will not include the processing fee or $25 donation.

Late Fees
$50 will be added to late registration fees after May 12, 2023. No payments will be accepted after May 19, 2023.

The registration fee (except for the $25 non-refundable donation) is refundable for any reason until June 14, 2023, but not for any reason thereafter. The $25 donation makes you a member of PsyArt, which also entitles you to attend and to vote at the annual meeting to be held on Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Florence. Please do attend and vote.

If you are having problems registering or have any other questions related to registration, please contact our Treasurer, Marcie Newton, at mnewton@albany.edu.

Accommodation

Florence has a wide range of hotels to choose from, from hostels offering budget accommodation to cozy boutique hotels and a number of well-furnished quality hotels.

Baglioni Grand Hotel

Hotel Baglioni is six minutes’ walk from Montedomini.

Excerpt from the website:

The Grand Hotel Baglioni, located in the heart of Florence, has been synonymous with hospitality and quality for over 100 years. It is housed in a magnificent 19th-century building, in which past and present coexist in perfect harmony, bearer of the values inherent to Florentine tradition.

Our four-star hotel offers 192 guest rooms, equipped with all the comforts and facilities of a high-standard hotel, and is home to a renowned Conference Centre, consisting of nine conference rooms accommodating up to 400 people. On the fifth floor, you can discover the beauty of our splendid B-Roof panoramic restaurant from which you can admire the skyline of Florence, taking in the whole city with a single glance.

Email the Baglioni Grand Hotel direct to receive a 15% discount on the hotel’s best flexible rate. Put “PSYART Psychology and the Arts” in the subject line. The hotel will check the best pricing at the time in which you book.

Cancellation Policy:

Free cancellation until 24 hours prior to arrival

Payment terms and conditions for Individual Reservations:

We will charge the hereby authorized amount (1 night) on your credit card as a non-refundable deposit 24 hours prior to arrival
Direct payment at check out

Booking: Website: https://www.hotelbaglioni.it/en, or email: booking@hotelbaglioni.it or phone +39 055 23580.

Travel

By plane

Florence’s airport is Florence Airport Peretola (Toscana Aeroporti Firenze). You can book flights directly through its website if you so choose. Most international airlines have flights that go to the airport in Florence (Airport code: FLR). Nearby aiports include Pisa (PSA), Bologna (BLQ), and Rome (FCO) that offer train services to and from Florence.

See Florencetips.com for further information on how best to travel to Florence Airport Peretola.

By train

If you are already in Italy and are taking a return trip to Florence, you can book a train with Italia Rail to Florence’s capital. By train– regional or high speed–you will arrive at Santa Maria Novella train station. The station is a short walk to the hotels.

About Florence

A dynamic city in the heart of Italy

As per the website Florence – What you need to know before you go – Go Guides (hotels.com), “Florence offers an irresistible trip back in time to the glory days of the Renaissance. The stunningly preserved historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its skyline dominated by the terracotta dome and soaring Gothic bell tower of Florence Cathedral. Museums like the Uffizi Gallery are studded with priceless masterpieces by local legends like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Meanwhile, the city’s cobbled plazas are lined with cosy cafes and boutiques selling chic local fashion and artisan goods. Naturally, it’s also a gourmand’s paradise, with rustic restaurants serving succulent Florentine steaks, fresh pappardelle swimming in wild boar ragu and other mouth-watering local dishes.”

More information on Florence

Extend your stay to explore and experience Florence on your own. Here are just a few ideas:

Destination Florence | The Official Florence Website to organize your trip – Destination Florence
Florence, Italy 2022 – Tourist Travel Guide for Holidays in Florence, Firenze (visitflorence.com)
Florence – What you need to know before you go – Go Guides (hotels.com)
Florence Travel Guide | U.S. News Travel (usnews.com)

Florence | Italy, History, Geography, & Culture | Britannica.

About Italy

Italy | Facts, Geography, History, Flag, Maps, & Population | Britannic
Italy | Facts & Information | Infoplease

Program

Wednesday, June 21

18:00–20:00: Welcome evening reception, rooftop terrace at The Machiavelli Palace Hotel, via Nazionale, 10, 50123, Florence. Tel. +39055216622; http://www.hotelmachiavelli.it

________________________________________________________

Thursday, June 22

In Sala Chiesa (trans. Church): Opening of the conference in the morning; plenary speaker presentation; fellowship panel; morning and afternoon parallel panel sessions.

8:45–9:00: Opening of the conference and President’s Welcome (Sala Chiesa)
9:00–10:00: Plenary Lecture: Dr. Carlo Bonomi: “Rethinking the Birth of Psychoanalysis: Disconnection, Censorship, and Self-censorship” (Sala Chiesa)

10:00–10:20: COFFEE BREAK

10:30–11:30: Fellowship Panel (Sala Chiesa)
Petra Egri: “Rape, Fashion, and Trauma in Alexander McQueen’s Fashion Performance”
Liting Song: “Does Artistic Training Affect Color Perception? A Study of ERPs and EROs in Experiencing Colors of Different Brightness”

12:00–13:30: Parallel Sessions 1 & 2
Session 1 (Sala Viola, trans. The Viola Room): Parenthood, Angela Carter’s Short Fiction, and Juliet Mitchell
Aline Ferreira: “The Future of Parenthood: Sedgewick’s The Growing Season (2017) and Sophie Barthes’s The Pod Generation (2023)”
Margrét Gunnarsdóttir Champion: “The Psychoanalytic Animal in Angela Carter’s Short Fiction”
Elizabeth Fox: “Cormac McCarthy’s Sibling Novels and Juliet Mitchell’s Sibling Theory”

Session 2 (Sala Giglio, trans. The Lily Room): The Oedipus Complex and the Complex Family, and the Film Jeanne Dielman
Carolin Baes: “Understanding the Female Oedipus Complex: A Longing for Loss in Myth and Fairy Tales”
David Schrans: “The Complex Family in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters and Lacan’s ‘Family Complexes’”
Xiao Chengjie: “The Order and Collapse of Time: Psychological Time, Rituals and Image in the Feminist Film Jeanne Dielman”

13:30–14:30: LUNCH

14:30–16:00: Parallel Sessions 3 & 4
Session 3 (Sala Viola): Freud, Laing, and Lacan
Simon Crosbie: “Examining Freud’s Reading Chair: Artistic, Religious and Psychological Considerations”
Adrian Chapman: “After the Fashionable Madmen: Is there Still a Place for R. D. Laing?”
Alexander Venetis: “The Subversion of Descartes’ Cogito and the (Im)possibility of a ‘Science of Singularity’”

Session 4 (Sala Giglio): Narrative Well-Being, Sensitivity Reading, and Psychoanalytic Close Reading
Eevastiina Kinnunen: “Exploring the Concept of Narrative Well-being”
Maria S. Kardaun: “Sensitivity Reading, Art Censorship, and Cancel Culture: Saint Augustine’s Views on Art Explained from a Jungian Perspective”
Paavo Manninen: “Psychoanalytic Close Reading of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale”

16:00–16:30: AFTERNOON COFFEE
Winding down with a casual gathering over coffee and
patisserie before we conclude the day.
________________________________________________________

Friday, June 23

Morning and afternoon parallel sessions; Directors’ meeting (PsyArt Directors only) in the late afternoon.

9:00–10:30: Parallel Sessions 5 & 6
Session 5 (Sala Viola): Visual Art, Animated Images, and The Creative Process
Rebecca Byrd Musser: “Generative Beauty: How Engaging Beauty Sparks Transformation”
Leena Eilittä: “Animated Images in Romantic Literature”
Patricia Townsend: “What Are You Waiting For? Waiting in the Process of Creating New Artwork”

Session 6 (Sala Giglio): Toni Morrison
Amina S. McIntyre: “Wholeness in the Harbor: A Consideration of Hush Harbors as Transitional Spaces in Morrison’s Beloved and Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf”
Kyeong Hwangbo: “The Anamorphic Real and Gaze in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”
Catharina Hellberg: “Heterogeneous Rupture in God Help the Child (2015) by Toni Morrison”

10:30–10:50: COFFEE BREAK

11:00–12:00: Parallel Sessions 7 & 8
Session 7 (Sala Viola): Poe and the Film The Piano
Daniel Ogden: “Madeline’s Malady: A Study in Pre-Freudian Hysteria in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’”
Marike Steeman: “Gender Differences, Harmony and Disharmony in The Piano”

Session 8 (Sala Giglio): Birth Trauma and the Film Vertigo
Julia Frigyes: “Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Birth Trauma”
Gavriel Reisner: “The Deep Woman and the Modeled Woman: Two Versions of The Feminine Uncanny in Hitchcock’s Vertigo”

12:00–13:00: Directors’ meeting in Sala Giglio (PsyArt Directors only)

13:00–14:30: LUNCH

14:30–16:40: Film Viewing in Sala Viola
Vertigo (1958) by Alfred Hitchcock (128 minutes)

16:40–17:15: AFTERNOON COFFEE
Discussion of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Vertigo, and Gavriel Reisner’s accompanying presentation in Session 8 over coffee and patisserie before we conclude the day.
________________________________________________________

Saturday, June 24

Morning parallel sessions; members’ meeting in the afternoon and group photos. Closing banquet in the evening at the Brunelleschi Hotel.

9:00-10:30: Parallel Sessions 9 & 10
Session 9 (Sala Viola): Children, Young People in Literature, and Loneliness
Aneela Shah: “The Burden of the Taxidermied Child: Familial Identity and the Child in Contemporary Literature”
Kati Kanto: “The Struggle Through the Darkness: The Identity and Growth of the Young in the Remote Areas in the Finnish Young Adult Novels of Hellevi Salminen and Italian Novel of Elena Ferrante My Excellent Friend”
Samir Dayal: “Choosing Loneliness: Anxiety and Self-Alienation”

Session 10 (Sala Giglio): Grief, Symbolic Suicide, and the Creative Self in Crisis
Rebecca Gimeno: “Unearthing Ghosts: Embracing the Uncanny and Horrifying in Grief”
Abigail Mokra: “Symbolic Suicide and Paranoiac Knowledge in Salinger’s ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ and Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’” (Absent)
Marcie Newton: “Blurring the Lines of Reality and Fiction: A Crisis of Authenticity, Memory, and Identity in Antonia White’s Autobiographical Fiction”

10:30–10:50: COFFEE BREAK

11:00–12:30: Session 11
Session 11 (Sala Giglio): Oedipus and Lacan
Antal Bókay: “Sophocles, Freud and Robert Wilson: The Post-dramatic Journey of the Oedipus Scene”
Lily Randall: “Stage Fright” (Absent)
Robert Silhol: “For a Coherent Presentation of the Lacanian Knot”

12:30–13:15: Members’ meeting in Sala Capitolo. All registrants are welcome and encouraged to attend!

13:15–13:30: Group photos

18:00–21:00: Closing banquet at the Brunelleschi Hotel, Piazza Santa Elisabetta, 3 – Florence. Tel. / WhatsApp: +39 055-27370; info@hotelbrunelleschi.it

18:00: Enjoy a glass of Prosecco and light snacks in the Sala Salotti (Lounge Room), and visit the hotel’s Pagliazza museum located underneath its premises.

19:00: The banquet will be held in the Liberty Restaurant.
________________________________________________________

Sunday, June 25

Full-day (10-hour) post-conference bus tour of the Tuscany landscapes: Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa (not included in registration fee) with Ciao Florence Tours and Travels

Tour includes:
– Tour leader
– Free roam around Siena
– Siena Cathedral entrance tickets
– Headsets for Siena Cathedral
– Free roam around San Gimignano
– Lunch in a traditional restaurant or winery and wine tasting in the Chianti region

08:30: Pick up at The Machiavelli Palace Hotel, via Nazionale, 10, 50123, Florence

18:30: Drop off at The Machiavelli Palace Hotel

Abstracts

The Plenary Lecture:

Dr. Carlo Bonomi: “Rethinking the Birth of Psychoanalysis: Disconnection, Censorship, and Self-Censorship”

Did Freud refuse to have his sons ritually circumcised? Did Emma Eckstein endure a circumcision when she was a girl? The author discusses these two controversial issues and suggests how they can help to rethink the origins of psychoanalysis. Erasing Emma Eckstein’s circumcision as a traumatic life event, Freud uprooted the birth of psychoanalysis from the ground of history, jeopardizing the possibility of Freud’s biographers and scholars providing a consistent account of his early discoveries. Yet, despite all distortions, it is still possible to restore significant connections between key historical events, from which an intrinsic legitimacy of psychoanalysis emerges, jointly with a different narration.

Parallel Panel Sessions:

Carolin Baes: “Understanding the Female Oedipus Complex: A Longing for Loss in Myth and Fairy Tales”

There have been previous calls for more attention to the mother-daughter relationship in the female Oedipus complex. Authors have characterized Freud’s approach, which takes the traditional Oedipus Rex story as its paradigm, as too linear to be able to say anything about it. What is central to the female complex is that the girl must separate herself from what is likewise her first love object, the mother, and take a step toward the father. This is in contrast to the boy who can keep his first love object and find it more easily later in other loves. Consequently, in the female Oedipus complex, more than in the male complex, there is a cyclical dynamic and melancholic undertone that colors the girl’s longing – a longing for loss. This is reflected in several stories, of which I will discuss a myth, Persephone and Demeter, and a fairy tale, The Little Mermaid.

Antal Bókay: “Sophocles, Freud and Robert Wilson – the Post-dramatic Journey of the Oedipus Scene”

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is a classical, traditional work, but it received several important ‘post-dramatic’ reinterpretations. I will interpret two radical re-enactments, which depart from traditional dramatic tradition. One was in Sigmund Freud’s oeuvre on the subject of the Oedipus complex. Freud sees psychoanalytic therapy as a kind of mise en scéne, where therapy creates a theatrical situation and psychoanalysis is born out of the theatre. My connected example is Robert Wilson’s, Oedipus Rex. I assume that Wilson is not primarily staging Sophocles’ Oedipus, but rather the Oedipus read (created) by Freud. Wilson’s performance of Oedipus as an unconscious narrative based on associative images, formless music, and a fragmented, disjointed text of the original drama, with a strong semiotic discursivity (in Kristeva’s sense) and by fading symbolic background.

Rebecca Byrd Musser: “Generative Beauty: How Engaging Beauty Sparks Transformation”

“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” declared Mahatma Gandhi. There is a profound awareness of the need for change as individuals reflect on the impact of global and system challenges as well as community challenges. People cannot just “be the change” until they themselves are first changed. Beauty is a powerful catalyst for change that begins with the individual, expanding to the community. To solve community problems, program designers must find a way to unleash untapped creativity. This study explores the impact of engaging beauty via the arts (paintings, Mary Oliver poetry, and The Lark Ascending) on the lives of seven women (American and British South Asian) living in London. Using theories surrounding Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” work as well as Developmental Evaluation and Most Significant Change techniques, this multi-cultural and multi-sensory approach shows the powerful role of beauty and art to change individuals’ thinking and actions. Keywords: Beauty, Art, Transformation, “Broaden-and-build,” Developmental Evaluation.

Adrian Chapman: “After the Fashionable Madmen: Is there Still a Place for R. D. Laing?”

The Scotsman R. D. Laing (1927-1989) was the best-known psychiatrist of the 1960s and 1970s. His former patient Clancy Sigal’s roman à clef, Zone of the Interior (1976), presents the psychiatrist as ‘Willy Last.’ Sigal thus asks: Will he (Laing) last? So, in 2023 should we view the author of The Divided Self (1960) and The Politics of Experience (1967)—books that once nestled next to volumes such as Steppenwolf, The Dice Man, and the i Ching—merely as a sign of a long-gone fashion, the counterculture’s romanticization of madness? Or can Laing still speak to us today? Drawing in part on research for a book I am writing about Laing’s Kingsley Hall community (1965-1970), I consider artists’ engagement with the psychiatrist; debates over his influence; and how he can contribute to current discussion regarding diagnosis, recovery, the clinician-patient relationship, and the politics of mental health.

Simon Crosbie: “Examining Freud’s Reading Chair: Artistic, Religious and Psychological Considerations”

Sigmund Freud’s reading chair, commissioned as a gift for him in 1930, has been the subject of continued curiosity. This paper considers Freud’s “special requirements” that motivated the design of the chair, notably the unique and habitual position his body assumed while reading. It explores the idea of the anthropomorphic object – the chair – as a substitute mother, arguing that Freud’s singular mode of reading relates, in part, to his exposure as an infant to images of the Virgin and Child prevalent in Freiberg, encounters facilitated through regular visits to local churches with his nanny. It examines his early relationships with his mother and nanny, and the impact of the birth and death of his younger brother Julius. The discussion also considers traditional imagery relating to the Marian cult in Moravia and Silesia, and by extension, Freud’s discourse on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.

Samir Dayal: “Choosing Loneliness: Anxiety and Self-Alienation”

It is of course a commonplace today, but the already rampant epidemic of loneliness has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and other global crises. It is impossible to overstate the terrible physical, social, and psychical toll of loneliness. It might then seem perverse to ask why or when a subject might choose self-alienation. Yet I will pose precisely such questions, briefly considering illustrative writings by South Korean novelist Han Kang and Iranian-Croatian American Ottessa Moshfegh. In both cases, the “choice” of self-alienation conforms to the criteria of rational choice theory. Each of the texts presents a case of a woman electing or choosing self-alienation—and each also responds to a trauma or neurosis with some form of “anxiety.” I explore this connection between self-alienation and anxiety, considering relevant work of Freud as it intersects with the problematic of anxiety in key texts of Kierkegaard and Heidegger—but also Lacan.

Petra Egri: “Rape, Fashion, and Trauma in Alexander McQueen’s Fashion Performance”

Alexander McQueen’s Highland Rape fashion performance substantially impacted the fashion world. He transformed the traditional fashion show into complex theatrical performances, telling stories through the garments. McQueen’s Highland Rape was a sadomasochistic mini-drama with strong traumatic symbolism. Models were dressed in garments with aggressive references. Naked breasts and garments torn around the models’ genitalia were a significant part of this performance. Some critics were offended by McQueen’s performance and clothes; they described them as misogynistic. The rape motif was a dominant presence in both the models’ appearance and in the atmosphere of this iconic fashion performance. Complex traumatic scenes were presented; everyday garments were replaced with dominatrices’ dog collar latex costumes or braless styles with stiletto heels. All of them were interesting from the perspective of a unique, personal objectifying traumatic process elevated to cultural discourse.

Leena Eilittä: “Animated Images in Romantic Literature”

Romantic literature is rich in narratives which include descriptions of other arts, both music and visual arts. This paper examines the role of visual arts particularly in the novella of Joseph von Eichendorff, although references are made also to other Romantic works. In The Marble Statue (Das Marmorbild, 1818), Eichendorff depicts a mental development of Florio, who is a poet, via confrontations with a marble statue whom he sees during his nightly walk in the Italian town of Lucca. The marble statue of Venus appears in his perceptions as a living human being who responds to his desires and takes him back to the realm of the childhood world. The statue evokes in Florio an unconscious state resembling that of ´le merveilleux´ which keeps on haunting him. The image here – as well as in many other Romantic narratives – acts as a projection of Florio´s inner world, which eventually contributes to the change in the protagonist´s mental landscape.

Aline Ferreira: “The Future of Parenthood: Sedgewick’s The Growing Season (2017) and Sophie Barthes’s The Pod Generation (2023)”

Taking my cue from Lacan’s question “What is a father?” I wish to explore the question “What is a mother?” through an analysis of Helen Sedgewick’s novel The Growing Season (2017) and Sophie Barthes’s recent movie The Pod Generation (2023). The novel and the film share a great number of thematic concerns. They are both set in a future where artificial wombs have been implemented, changing parenting in radical ways. Questions about the role of technology in pregnancy versus the traditional, natural way of procreating and the medicalization of birth occupy centre stage in these narratives, as well as the psychological effects of ectogestation both on the parents and the children. With ectogenesis, the male envy of pregnancy, or womb envy, would be at least partially eliminated, since most women would no longer become pregnant to have babies, thus occupying a similar place to men in the reproductive sphere. These and related issues will be examined with recourse to recent feminist psychoanalytical work, such as that by Bracha L. Ettinger and Alison Stone, amongst others.

Elizabeth Fox: “Cormac McCarthy’s “Sibling” Novels and Juliet Mitchell’s Sibling Theory”

The 2022 publication of Cormac McCarthy’s “sibling” novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, about Bobby and Alicia Western, returned me to Juliet Mitchell’s Siblings: Sex and Violence (2003). I summarize Mitchell’s theory of the importance of lateral relations and sibling trauma, which threatens an older sibling’s identity as “the baby.” Initially, the birth of a new baby suggests that it and the older child are the same, prompting love. Mitchell theorizes that relationships with siblings, cousins, and peers influence our psychic development more than we recognize. Oedipal and pre-Oedipal theories emphasize the vertical axis between generations; the horizontal axis deserves attention, even if a sibling is only anticipated due to knowledge of peers’ families. In Stella Maris, the hallucinations of Alicia, in love with her older brother, may arise from her inability to recognize the ‘law of the mother,” Mitchell’s term.

Julia Frigyes: “Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Birth Trauma”

In my presentation I will share some thoughts on overlapping experiences of birth, childbirth, and trauma. To understand these phenomena of life, we must accept some paradox and even ultimate unknowability. Birth, giving life, traumatization and healing – these are very different in some respects and yet bear many similarities. What is the source of traumatization and source of healing? How is the body/soul unity broken and restored again as a result of the extremely stressful experience? Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary serves as the guiding thread of my train of thought. I supplement it with Winnicott’s theory of birth trauma and details of some other psychoanalytic-philosophical trauma theories. In addition to the theory, I will supplement it with some details of my own mother-infant therapy cases. I will introduce some typical aspects of healing work in a common therapeutic space with the mother and the infant.

Rebecca Gimeno: “Unearthing Ghosts: Embracing the Uncanny and Horrifying in Grief”

This essay explores the depths of grief, delving into the emotions and experiences that are often overlooked or excluded by mainstream models. Despite their tendency to shy away from, or exclude, the uncanny and the horrifying, the author argues that these aspects of grief may benefit from further exploration and inclusion. The essay also reviews haunting, uncanny, and horrifying depictions of grief in art and history. Drawing on insights from psychoanalysis and existential-phenomenological psychology, this writer advocates for candid explorations of grief, creating a space for grievers to freely express their experiences without censorship, moving beyond adaptive and maladaptive notions of grief.

Margrét Gunnarsdóttir Champion: “The Psychoanalytic Animal in Angela Carter’s Short Fiction”

Despite Angela Carter’s ambivalent, even troubled, relationship with psychoanalysis, her second collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber (1979) reflects a Lacanian orientation in their exploration of desire, female subjectivity and sexual relations. These “unfaithfully” retold fairy tales, from a modernized Bluebeard through accounts of Beauty and the Beast to versions of cunning wolves and suffering vampires, can in a sense be understood as staging the real of the drive through the perspective of the imaginary and the symbolic registers. Similar to Lacan’s animal philosophy, Carter poses the fullness of the imaginary as animalistic and traces the human project as self-alienation and intersubjective recognition. Thus, many of the tales my paper analyses narrate estrangement as the counterforce to affect immersed in the real – aggression, cruelty, avarice, fetishism. In her psychoanalytic take on Perrault’s mythic world, Carter expresses modalities of liberation by problematizing fairy tale motifs such as mirrors, the gaze, metamorphosis and the dichotomy of culture and nature.

Catharina Hellberg: “Heterogeneous Rupture in God Help the Child (2015) by Toni Morrison”

Released in 2015, Toni Morrison’s latest novel, God Help the Child, elicited a tepid critical response by reviewers . Though recognizing the unique qualities of Toni Morrison’s writing in it, they did not find it could compare with her previous novels. As I will demonstrate, however, the fact that it is Toni Morrison’s “first book set in our current moment” differentiates it from her previous work. With the setting of the novel being that of consumerist society in which nonverbal communication and intermediality rule, its narrative reflects the individual consequences of living in such a world. With focus on the poetic dimension of its language, I will consider the narrative a signifying process generating meaning beyond the limits of the Symbolic.

Kyeong Hwangbo: “The Anamorphic Real and Gaze in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”

This paper explores the significance and role of the Lacanian Real in trauma narratives in connection with the trope of anamorphosis and its alternative mode of representation by focusing on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Since the Real appears as a disturbance in the symbolic, the subject in its encounter with the enigmatic Real faces the irreducible realm of non-sense resisting signification and interpretation. In Morrison’s novel Beloved, the Real manifests in the form of anamorphic symptom as Beloved, the reincarnation of the protagonist Sethe’s lost daughter. Where the white “righteous look” of dominance prevails, Beloved’s resurrection and uncanny return as the embodiment of traumatic, unspeakable past unveils the constitutive lack in the hegemonic racial symbolic. As anamorphosis, in exposing the incompleteness of frontal view, invites an oblique, alternative perspective, Morrison’s narrative of traumatic haunting encourages an awry, oppositional gaze seeing through the facade of the symbolic and its master signifier.

Kati Kanto: “The Struggle Through the Darkness: The Identity and Growth of the Young in the Remote Areas in the Finnish Young Adult Novels of Hellevi Salminen and Italian Novel of Elena Ferrante My Excellent Friend”

Growing up and becoming an individual can be a painful task. Sometimes young people have to do it under difficult circumstances, in the shadow of parents who are mentally disturbed or neglect their children. Young people’s literature has begun to describe situations that deviate from the teachings of uniform morality. The books continue to describe men’s use of power over women and the special strength that women need to get ahead in life. In my presentation, I examine the books of Finnish young adult author Hellevi Salminen: The Face of an Angel, What Is It, Saila?, I Miss You So Much and Angel Without Wings. From a psychological point of view, I compare these novels to the Italian novel by Elena Ferrante, My Excellent Friend. All the works are feminist novels because they deal with the stifling effect of gender roles on people’s lives.

Maria S. Kardaun: “Sensitivity Reading, Art Censorship, and Cancel Culture: Saint Augustine’s Views on Art Explained from a Jungian Perspective”

Contemporary phenomena such as the purging of literary texts, attempts to rewrite history on moral grounds, and other forms of moral extremism do not exactly come out of the blue. The roots go back at least to the influential thinker Augustine, and even further. While Augustine was still a carefree pagan youth, his mother had an important dream about him that happens to have been preserved (Conf. III.11). On a superficial level, the dream reads as simple wish fulfillment. On a deeper level, however, there is something more to the sequence of symbolic images. We will shed light on the psychologically relevant subtext of these images from a Jungian perspective and show how they relate to Augustine’s world view in general and his views on art in particular.

Eevastiina Kinnunen: “Exploring the Concept of Narrative Well-being”

Our well-being intertwines with stories and narratives around us. The ability to engage with narratives and verbalize our own experiences are crucial to our identity and agency, and thereby to our well-being. Narratives are not only tools or means to support well-being, but narrativity also functions as a significant dimension of well-being. This relevance of narrativity should be acknowledged and examined conceptually. Therefore, in this paper, I will elaborate on the concept of narrative well-being. This paper draws on bibliotherapy research, literary studies, and reading studies. The concept of narrative well-being has been used in a few studies before, but it requires more detailed and systematic development. This paper discusses narrative well-being in relation to other narrative-oriented theoretical approaches and reflects on the potential of this concept in reading groups and bibliotherapeutic practices.

Paavo Manninen: “Psychoanalytic Close Reading of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale”

Close reading can broadly be defined as a basic method of literature studies, which helps the reader to observe language and structures of the text. Close reading is also a tool to distinguish between the reader’s personal reactions from the emotional reality of the text. However, the binary text–reader is not that simple. Norman Holland described psychoanalytic literature criticism where the text is not interpreted “out there” as a separate unit from the reader’s mind. The paper asks what kind of consequences psychoanalytic theories of literature, like Winnicott’s idea of the transitional area of aesthetic experience and Freud’s concepts of word-presentations and thing-presentations, have for close reading. What is particularly psychoanalytic close reading? How do the reader’s “counter-transference” reactions work as an instrument for interpretation? The topics are illustrated by analysing psychoanalytic scholars’ readings of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The paper focuses on the play’s ending, the statue scene, which has been considered one of the most powerful scenes in Shakespeare.

Amina S. McIntyre: “Wholeness in the Harbor: A Consideration of Hush Harbors as Transitional Spaces in Morrison’s Beloved and Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf

“Wholeness in the Harbor,” using womanist and embodied (spatial) theology through a phenomenological survey, considers the resistant and healing natures of “hush harbor” spaces, literature and drama. In the African American enslaved communities, the enslaved gathered to remember their spiritual roots and retain their communal rites, rituals, and cultural morals and values, the best semblance of their original home. This paper considers studies of spirituality and the arts, specifically how they have always been a conduit for providing hope and resilience and maintaining joy within the African American and the African diasporic communities. Specifically, this paper discusses Winnicott’s “transitional space” and the clearing spaces presented by Toni Morrison in Beloved and Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf to develop and present a potential model for various groups to reestablish home and transform energy within a space in the midst of trauma.

Abigail Mokra: “Symbolic Suicide and Paranoiac Knowledge in Salinger’s ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ and Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’”

The human experience is a pursuit for total control over knowledge of desire; when met with an impasse, we experience an immediate self-perceived loss of autonomous control, as well as an emotional response through anxiety, excitement, dread, delight, displeasure, or detachment. These are the pangs of paranoiac knowledge; as our relationship to the unknown shifts to an I versus it (the symbolic Other) dichotomy, our thwarted desire for mastery of all knowledge creates a paranoiac response that sets off self-sabotaging, repetitive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. This is a simplified explanation of the intersection between Slavoj Žižek’s adapted concept of Freud’s Death Drive and Jacques Lacan’s early concept of paranoiac knowledge. As the ultimate unknown, processing death requires a complete abandonment of control; death does not deter our autonomy, however, which remains a possible solution to our neurosis to control knowledge of it. Suicide then becomes a radical means to exert our autonomy over death, thereby creating a sense of control by acting against our own self-interest to combat the initial neurosis. In this paper I examine the paranoiac, suicidal (symbolic and real) responses to death in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-lighted Place” and J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”

Marcie Newton: “Blurring the Lines of Reality and Fiction: A Crisis of Authenticity, Memory, and Identity in Antonia White’s Autobiographical Fiction”

This paper is part of a larger project on the life and work of British author, Antonia White. As a writer of autobiographical fiction, White sought to find a balance between writing a personal testimony of traumatic experiences she had suffered in her life and appealing to literary aesthetic values. From a literary scholar’s perspective, this is a challenging undertaking. How much stock can readers place in autobiographical novels being true reflections of lived traumatic experiences? In this paper, I explore the knotted areas of authenticity, memory, and identity, including a discussion of Phillipe Lejeune’s ideas on form and theory of the autobiographical novel, controversial critical literary theories and criticism on authorial intention, and psychoanalytic interpretations of creative writers through a Freudian lens. In an examination of the limitations and possibilities of authenticating narratives of trauma, I argue for a space to be carved for White’s autobiographical fiction to be taken seriously as creative works that aspire to both an authentic expression of personal experience and aesthetic values.

Daniel Ogden: “Madeline’s Malady : A Study in Pre-Freudian Hysteria in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’”

This paper argues that Madeline is suffering from hysteria as understood before Freud. Adopting this view helps us better understand Madeline’s character and the short story itself. The paper draws upon the ancient history of hysteria as a medical diagnosis, one that was held to be specific to women, originating in the alleged powers of the furor uterinus. The highly mobile uterus was assumed to cause women to be dangerously unstable and out of control; hence the need for men in their surroundings to control them. Madeline should be seen as one in a long line of “mad women” in literature who were victims of patriarchal control, for example, Ophelia in Hamlet, Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre and the nameless narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

Lily Randall: “Stage Fright”

In performance art, mechanisms through which a performer may accidentally revealingly
speak (hesitation, forgetting, nervousness, slip) are intentionally mastered through rehearsal, planning, scripting, and other devices of event management. I look to Lacan’s writing on certainty and doubt to reimagine communication in performance art, in particular integrating “bad” performance: embarrassment, shyness, blushing, hesitation, stutter, or accident, as an integral part of what is communicated through performance, instead of what is failed to be communicated. Lacan describes Freud’s method saying: “Freud, when he doubts … is assured that a thought is there, which is unconscious, which reveals itself as absence.” The unintended in performance art can be understood as a glitched tethering of unconscious desire to the real or symbolic. If the unconscious has a temporal structure, performance art can contain the duration required for Lacan’s idea of “logical time” to play out. I look to Adrian Piper’s performances “Catalysis 5-7” which turn the futility of ontology (where did my speech come from?) into sport and flips the moment of slip or forgetting into the end or goal of the performance.

Gavriel Reisner: “The Deep Woman and the Modeled Woman: Two Versions of The Feminine Uncanny in Hitchcock’s Vertigo”

In his nuanced discussion of “The Uncanny,” Freud’s strongest example is the secret body of woman, man’s estranged home. The deepest part of “The Uncanny” is the Feminine Uncanny. Man’s estranged home goes back to Oedipal longing with love-relationships often based on two derivatives of Oedipal longing: The Deep Woman and The Modeled Woman. Alfred Hitchcock, always Freudian, illustrates these two kinds of love-object through Midge (as Deep Woman) and Madeline (as Modeled Woman). We learn that there is a vitalizing/disempowering “female gaze” that men experience countering Laura Mulvey’s castrating (and one-dimensional) “male gaze.” The secret meaning of the whorl in the bun in Carlotta Valdez’s seductive hair pertains to the secret body of woman. That hidden element also provides the key to untangling the intricate web of truth and fiction that weave together in the film’s complicated narrative presentation.

David Schrans: “The Complex Family in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters and Lacan’s ‘Family Complexes’”

In his film Shoplifters (2018), Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda explores the complex notion of the family. He presents us with a family of which none of the members are related to one another, thus exploring the question of the cultural and biological roots of the family. Lacan explores the same question in his text on “The Family Complexes in the Formation of the Individual” (1938), where he presents the family as a “cultural structure” and an “institution”. In this paper we will focus on the position of the father as an element within this institution. We will first explore Lacan’s early proposition that the father is in decline due to societal evolutions. Next, we will discuss Lacan’s theory on the father as structurally lacking. In conclusion, we will apply both interpretations to the position of the father in Shoplifters.

Aneela Shah: “The burden of the Taxidermied Child: Familial Identity and the Child in Contemporary Literature”

My thesis uses the theories of Freud, Winnicott and Lacan to explore the ‘figure of the child’ in contemporary American literature (Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kristen Arnett’s Mostly Dead Things). I use ‘taxidermy’ as a way of thinking through how the children in these texts are forced to act as a mirror (applying both Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’ theory and Winnicott’s ‘mother as mirror’ theory) of their parents’ identities, at the expense of the creation of an individual sense of self. I then use Freud’s theory of ‘the uncanny’ to examine how through mirroring, the child becomes an uncanny, taxidermied individual. Finally, I explore how much like Freud’s ‘fort/da’ game (where the child learns to play in the absence of its mother), the taxidermied child in my chosen texts is able to master its parental trauma by creating its existence beyond the inherited identity from its family.

Robert Silhol: “For a Coherent Presentation of the Lacanian Knot”

Freud’s discovery that dreams had a meaning is a remark that can be extended to language and even to women’s and men’s behavior. What was of course miraculous was that in his research, Freud was giving himself an object that he did not know and had not been known until then, something like a “black hole”. In the fifties, Jacques Lacan repeated what consider the operation, insisting that psychoanalysis was more difficult and obscure than one may have thought and that this recent approach deserved more care. Indeed, “Ca ne peut pas s’écrire, mais ça se dit tyout de même.” Yes, how can we approach what we do not know? To proceed in his research, a very hard task indeed, Lacan gave himself two tools: his particular poetic language and even, in order to be clearer, he thought, drawings based on the well-known “noeud borroméen”. As all this is far as clear as he thought, I wish, in my turn, to add my grain of salt to the debate, to make sure that what he said was indeed what he was saying. For we know that what he could not say, he illustrated.

Liting Song: “Does Artistic Training Affect Color Perception? A Study of ERPs and EROs in Experiencing Colors of Different Brightness”

Color is a key factor for visual experience. However, little is known about the differences in color perception caused by artistic training. Forty-four participants with or without art training were assigned to two groups for an experiment in which they scored emotional response to color stimuli of different brightness levels while their EEG data was recorded. In general, high-brightness colors were rated more positively than low-brightness colors. Furthermore, non-artists had a shorter P2 latency and a longer N2 latency than artists, and there was a significant group ×brightness interaction for the N2 and P3 components separately. Simple-affect analysis showed that N2 and P3 amplitudes for the artistic group were substantially higher for high-brightness stimuli than for lower-brightness stimuli, but not for the non-artist group. These results imply that high-brightness color stimuli trigger more positive emotions and attract stronger attention, and artistic training has a positive effect on top-down visual perception. Keywords: ERP/ERO, color perception, artistic training, brightness, emotion, Munsell color system

Marike Steeman: “Gender Differences, Harmony and Disharmony in The Piano”

The film The Piano (1993) is set in the wild nature of New Zealand. The director Jane Campion, born in there was the first woman to receive a Golden Palm. The story is set around 1850. Ada is a single mother from Scotland, who has been unable to speak since she was 6 years old. She was married off by her father to Alisdair Stewart, a New Zealand settler and landowner. In The Piano, we see special and complex relationships unfold between Ada and her 9-year-old daughter Flora, between Ada and her piano, and between Ada and two male players. From the start, harmony in the film is constantly alternated with intense and fierce disharmony, not only between people but also in nature and in music. In this presentation, the relationships between the characters are viewed and understood from the perspective of object relations and attachment theories. Jane Campion’s directing, her motives and female way of working are also discussed.

Patricia Townsend: “What are you Waiting for? Waiting in the Process of Creating a New Artwork”

Waiting is integral to the creative process. The making of a new artwork is not a continuous journey but involves a series of stops and starts, calling for artists to be willing to wait – perhaps for a vague ‘pre-sense’ of the possible direction of a work, then for a more clearly formed idea and then again for the developing work to ‘speak’ its needs. In this paper, Townsend describes her own process of making a recent artwork Trees, Trauma and Transformation and shows how, at various stages in the creative process, it was essential to wait without knowing what she was waiting for, allowing time and space for inner processes to evolve. The paper draws on D.W. Winnicott’s theory of transitional phenomena and touches on Marion Milner’s writing about her own painting process.

Alexander Venetis: “The Subversion of Descartes’ Cogito and the (Im)possibility of a ‘Science of Singularity’”

Lacan’s attempt to develop psychoanalysis in the 1970s into a paradoxical ‘science of singularity’ was the logical outcome of his earlier work. There persists no breach between Lacan’s early and later work; on the contrary, Lacan’s oeuvre shows a remarkably consistent development. In this paper, I reconstruct Lacan’s reading of Descartes’ cogito, set out in Seminar XI (1964), and elaborate on Lacan’s ‘subversion’ of it. Lacan shows that although Descartes misapprehends the subject – the subject cannot be considered coherent and consistent – he unwittingly yet happily introduced the split subject. Lacan’s subversion thus consists in showing that Descartes was right in being wrong, so to speak. Whilst folding the Cartesian cogito inside out, Lacan paves the way for psychoanalysis to become a ‘science of singularity.’ Ultimately, psychoanalysis aims at the production of knowledge about the absence of knowledge, i.e., the generation of intelligible knowledge of what, finally, is incomprehensible about knowledge, i.e., its inherent inconsistency.

Chengjie Xiao: “The Order and Collapse of Time: Psychological Time, Rituals and Image in the Feminist Film Jeanne Dielman”

This paper analyzes how Akerman’s feminist classic film Jeanne Dielman (1975) shapes viewers’ psychological perceptions of time and sensory-motor schemes through film language. By combining a formal analysis, Deleuze’s film theory, and feminist critique, this paper reveals the film’s parallel symmetrical structures of psyche and time. The first structure is between the image on the screen and the image in the viewers’ heads, while the second structure is the symmetrical relationship in time discovered through statistical and structural analysis of the film’s shots. Akerman’s use of camera language, character, and narrative allows viewers to experience the character’s obsessive rituals and precise order of everyday life in the first-time loop, while the second time loop leads to the collapse of the sensory-motor scheme with the protagonist. The audience becomes a detective who finds clues and compels the female protagonist to return to the order. Keywords: time-image, Deleuze, psychological time, obsessive rituals, long shot, feminism