Tom Artin: Primal Scene/Primal Wound: The psychoanalytic arc of Parsifal
After they have witnessed the scarlet-suffused ritual revealing the Grail in Act I, Gurnemanz poses to Parsifal the primal question: Weißt du was du sahst? Do you know what you saw? This question is an enigma whose solution becomes the goal of the “pure fool’s” arduous quest. The answer, we will discover, is the primal scene, which, in Act II, is experienced by our hero not just vicariously, but in the flesh viscerally and shatteringly in Kundry’s passionate embrace. “Amfortas! The wound!” Parsifal cries out in retreat from the brink of penetration. In that sudden insight, he is overwhelmed by the reality of the castration threat lurking at the heart of every primal scene. The emotional sequelae following upon erotic enlightenment—guilt, remorse, compassion, and finally absolution—constitute the measured denouement of Parsifal, which culminates in a fantasy of redemption and the illusory resolution of primal anxiety.
Tom Artin is the author most recently of What Parsifal Saw. A previous book, The Wagner Complex; Genesis and Meaning of The Ring, was presented at the Freud Museum’s Freud/Wagner conference in 2013. He has lectured on this book to Richard Wagner Societies in the United States, Austria, and Germany. Other books are The Allegory of Adventure: Reading Chrétien’s Erec and Yvain, and Earth Talk: Independent Voices on the Environment. Artin holds both a B.A. in English Literature, and a Ph D. in Comparative Medieval Literature from Princeton University.
In our conference 'Wagner, Freud and the End of Myth' (2013) we argued that by taking the mythic dimension and bringing it into the human realm, Wagner anticipated Freud in his depiction of unconscious processes of the mind. It could be said that Freud and Wagner were dealing with the same stuff - the “fundamental psychosexual issues that affect us all” as Barry Millington put it, and for that reason a fruitful dialogue can exist between their two bodies of work.
The present conference is entirely devoted to Wagner’s final masterpiece, Parsifal, and explores whether this sublime, troubling and contentious work prefigures psychoanalytic insight or resists psychoanalytic interpretation. As a story of compassion and redemption, which nevertheless describes a world of perversion and mental anguish, what can Parsifal tell us about the secret springs of human desire and the conflicts of human nature? And how did Wagner manage to create it?
The Lost Objects of Childhood Author’s talk: Deborah Levy
Talk: House/Museum by Dr Anthony Hudek
Freud’s Collection: Passion, Loss and Recovery
Radio Schreber, Soliloques for Schziophonic voices
Maggi Hambling: On the Artist’s Couch
Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump, Power, Populism, Narcissism with David Owen
Words and Signifiers Still Matter - Yael Baldwin
Protest Psychosis: Race, Stigma, and the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia
The Enigma of the Hour: Artist’s Talk, Jennifer Higgie in conversation with Daniel Silver and Simon Moretti
Freud in Prison - Pamela Windham Stewart and Kelly
The Hidden Persuader
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
David Lomas: A Language of Flowers: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, and the Botanical Imaginary
Krzysztof Fijalkowski: The Question of Play Analysis: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis and the Game of Symbolically Functioning Objects
Martin Bladh: The Rorschach Text (reading)
Roundtable: The Private Life: Why we Remain in the Dark
Narcissus, Oedipus and the Persistence of Memory
Curator's talk: Dawn Ades in conversation with Darian Leader
Freud's Women Lisa Appignanesi in conversation with Susie Orbach
Conference: Solitary Pleasures in art and psychoanalysis- Open discussion end of session 4
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Positive Thinking Mind
In the Great Khan’s Tent
Visualize Meditations
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast