Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain

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Drawn from a major Freud Museum London conference, Freud/Lynch goes against the dubious cliché of finding Freudian solutions to Lynchian mysteries. Rather than presuming to fill in what Lynch leaves open by positing some forbidden psychosexual reality lurking behind his trademark red curtains, this book instead maintains a fidelity to the mysteries of his wonderful and strange filmic worlds, finding in them productive spaces where thought and imagination can be set to work.

Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain - .: 9781912691951 - AbeBooks Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain - .: 9781912691951 - AbeBooks

Lynch’s unwillingness – or inability – to openly discuss the meaning of his work has enticed and frustrated audiences and critical establishments alike since the emergence of ‘Eraserhead’ in 1977. Who or what exactly has Laura Palmer now become in ‘Twin Peaks’? Why won’t he tells us what’s really going on in ‘Lost Highway’? Why won’t he confirm or deny our own complex theories on the workings of ‘Mulholland Drive’? Why does he invite us into his own dreamscapes and then leave us to figure our own way out, with just a liberal scattering of clues to help? Does he even have the answers himself, or is he too just enjoying the mysteries contained in the dream? This session is about the gulf that exists between Lynch’s work and Lynch’s mouth – the sinkhole that can open up between intention and effect. This is about the man who brings new power to the phrase ‘tight-lipped’. 11. Stefan Marianski The hysterical subject is an essential figure in Lynchian cinema. With an art historical lens, this paper will explore how hysteria has returned time and time again throughout Lynch’s oeuvre by looking at a few important characters, from The Alphabet (1968), to Blue Velvet (1986), to Twin Peaks (1990-2017). 5. Catherine SpoonerWhy not puncture bafflement with playful speculation? Mulholland Drive proves surprisingly amenable to the dream logic explored by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, so let’s see where it takes us. 3. Andrea Sabbadini

Stefan Marianski - Firing The Mind

Allister Mactaggart, PhD, is a Lecturer in Media at Chesterfield College. He is the author of The Film Paintings of David Lynch: Challenging Film Theory (Intellect, 2010), in addition to which he has published on landscapes in Lynch’s work in relation to the legacy of the sublime in North American art, and on pop music and loss in Mulholland Drive. Allister has presented papers on Lynch’s work at conferences nationally and internationally, and was one of the guest speakers at the Conversations symposium held on conjunction with the David Lynch Naming exhibition at MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) in 2015. The idea for the conference coincided with the release of the final season of the cult series Twin Peaks, known as The Return (2017), which revisits faces and storylines from 25 years before. The original show ended on a cliff-hanger in 1991. However, if you watched The Return, you’ll have probably found that you finished the 18 episodes with more questions than answers! Maybe it was for this reason that the event was so well attended: it was a cathartic space for us all to digest what had happened the year before; or maybe it was a space to relive it, and work through the trauma together. Jamie Ruers is an Art Historian and a Researcher at the Freud Museum London. She has written and given talks on art history and psychoanalysis on subjects including Viennese Modernism and the French Surrealists.Costume plays an important but under-recognised part in Lynch’s aesthetic. This talk will explore the distinctive contribution costume makes to Lynch’s oeuvre with a particular focus on Twin Peaks, showing how for Lynch, costume is more than just character and relates to his ongoing fascination with the curtain or veil. It will also playfully examine the influence Lynch’s work has had on fashion. 6. Jaice Sara Titus How far down the Lost Highway can we get with psychoanalytic theory as our guide? In this talk I would like to take a look at some of the remarkable parallels between David Lynch’s masterpiece and Lacanian psychoanalysis. I hope to draw out some Lynchian lessons about the structure of desire and the function of the law, and to offer some psychoanalytic reflections on some of Lost Highway‘s many enigmas. With contributions from Olga Cox Cameron, Tamara Dellutri, Allister Mactaggart, Stefan Marianski, Richard Martin, Todd McGowan, Carol Owens, Chris Rodley, Jamie Ruers, Andrea Sabbadini, and Mary Wild.

Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain - ed. by Jamie Ruers and Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain - ed. by Jamie Ruers and

With contributions from scholars, psychoanalysts, cinephiles and filmmakers, this collection of essays explores potential affinities and disjunctions between Lynch and Freud. Encompassing themes such as art, identity, architecture, fantasy, dreams, hysteria and the unconscious, ‘Freud/Lynch’ takes as its point of departure the possibility that the enterprise in which these two distinct investigators are engaged might in some sense be a shared one. The weekend finished with a panel discussing and finding sense in The Return, which included Richard Martin, Todd McGowan, Allistair McTaggart and Tamara Dellutri who took questions from the audience. A transcript of this gripping panel discussion finishes the book. David Lynch is known for creating luxurious cinematic dreamscapes – infuriatingly beautiful mind puzzles in his signature surrealistic style. Three films in particular ( Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire) form his unofficial ‘blurred identity trilogy’, featuring characters who embark on bizarre inward journeys in search of lost selves. The central premise of this talk is that in each instalment of the trilogy, a psychogenic fugue follows the unconscious trauma of unrequited love. Psychoanalytic theory will be shown to illuminate Lynch’s iconic dream-logic, which is disturbing and beguiling in equal measure. Speakers’ BiographiesLynch, who once told an interviewer “I love dream logic,” would surely agree with Sigmund Freud’s famous claim that “before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms.” But what else might the two agree on? I have given talks, contributed to films, hosted and contributed to podcasts, and presented papers at conferences.