Author Anna Kavan’s critical and popular reception since her death in 1968 has been defined by a cult of personality fuelled by revelations about her psychiatric breakdown, heroin use and adoption of her own fictional character’s name. Victoria Walker unravels some of the accumulated mythology around this writer, and examines her complex association with, and interest in, early twentieth-century psychiatry and psychotherapy.
As well as being treated in private asylums and nursing homes, Kavan underwent a short analysis at the Tavistock Clinic, experienced Ludwig Binswanger’s method of existential psychotherapy at the Bellevue Sanatorium, and had a close personal relationship with her longtime psychiatrist Karl Bluth. Kavan promoted a radical politics of madness, giving voice to the disenfranchised and marginalized psychiatric patient and presaging the anti-psychiatry movement.
Dr Victoria Walker’s research focuses on twentieth-century women writers and fictional representations of psychiatric treatment. She wrote the introduction to the recent edition of Kavan’s 'I Am Lazarus'. She teaches at King’s College, London and administers the Anna Kavan Society.
Part of a season of performances, talks, films and events accompanying the exhibition 'Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors', 10 October 2013 - 2 February 2014.
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
Conference: Solitary Pleasures in art and psychoanalysis- Open discussion end of session 2
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