Tom DeRose: Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche in Berlin
With reference to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s recent Berlin production, this paper will consider the relationship between the character of Gurnemanz in Wagner’s Parsifal and Nietzsche’s conception of the ascetic priest in On the Genealogy of Morals. Although Gurnemanz appears as an un-biased narrator, something akin to the Evangelist in a Bach Passion, just how far removed from the action is he? I will suggest that the insights of Freud and René Girard can help us to gain a deeper understanding not only of this ‘all knowing’ story-teller, but also of the violence which lies at the heart of social systems.
Tom DeRose is Volunteer Coordinator at the Freud Museum where he helps to organise conferences and runs the Freud Museum reading group. He studied History and Philosophy and has a longstanding interest in the operas of Richard Wagner.
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
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