Psychoanalysis And Performance

The field of literary studies has long recognised the centrality of psychoanalysis as a method for looking at texts in a new way. But rarely has the relationship between psychoanalysis and performance been mapped out, either in terms of analysing the nature of performance itself, or in terms of making sense of specific performance-related activities. In this volume some of the most distinguished thinkers in the field make this exciting new connection and offer original perspectives on a wide variety of topics, including: · hypnotism and hysteria · ventriloquism and the body · dance and sublimation · the unconscious and the rehearsal process · melancholia and the uncanny · cloning and theatrical mimesis · censorship and activist performance · theatre and social memory. The arguments advanced here are based on the dual principle that psychoanalysis can provide a productive framework for understanding the work of performance, and that performance itself can help to investigate the problematic of identity.

Performance Anxieties looks at the on-going debates over the value of psychoanalysis for feminist theory and politics--specifically concerning the social and psychical meanings of racialization. Beginning with an historicized return to Freud and the meaning of Jewishness in Freud's day, Ann Pellegrini indicates how "race" and racialization are not incidental features of psychoanalysis or of modern subjectivity, but are among the generative conditions of both. Performance Anxieties stages a series of playful encounters between elite and popular performance texts--Freud meets Sarah Bernhardt meets Sandra Bernhard; Joan Riviere's masquerading women are refigured in relation to the hard female bodies in the film Pumping Iron II: The Women; and the Terminator and Alien films. In re-reading psychoanalysis alongside other performance texts, Pellegrini unsettles relations between popular and elite, performance and performative.

Freud said that "love and work" are the central therapeutic goals of psychoanalysis; the twin pillars for a sound mind and for living the "good life." While psychoanalysis has masterfully contributed to understanding the experience of love, it has only made a modest contribution to understanding the psychology of work. This book is the first to explore fully the psychoanalysis of work, analysing career choice, job performance and job satisfaction, with an eye toward helping people make wiser choices that bring out the best in themselves, their colleagues and their organization. The book addresses the crucial questions concerning work: how does one choose the right career; what qualities contribute to excellence in performance; how best to implement and cope with organizational change; and what capacity and skills does one need to enjoy every day work? Drawing on psychoanalytic thinking, vocational counseling, organizational psychology and business studies, The Psychoanalysis of Career Choice, Job Performance, and Satisfaction will be invaluable in clinical psychoanalytic work, as well as for mental health professionals, scholars, career counselors and psychologists looking for a deeper understanding of work-based issues.

This finely illustrated book offers a simple yet comprehensive 'grammar' of a new discipline. Performance Art first became popular in the fifties when artists began creating 'happenings'. Since then the artist as a performer has challenged many of the accepted rules of the theatre and radically altered our notion of what constitutes visual art. This is the first publication to outline the essential characteristics of the field and to put forward a method for teaching the subject as a discipline distinct from dance, drama, painting or sculpture. Taking the theory of primary and secondary colours as his model, Anthony Howell posits three primaries of action and shows how these may be mixed to obtain a secondary range of actions. Based on a taught course, the system is designed for practical use in the studio and is also entertaining to explore. Examples are cited from leading performance groups and practitioners such as Bobbie Baker, Orlan, Stelarc, Annie Sprinkle, Robert Wilson, Goat Island, and Station House Opera. This volume, however, is not just an illustrated grammar of action - it also shows how the syntax of that grammar has psychoanalytic repercussions. This enables the performer to relate the system to lived experience, ensuring a realisation that meaning is being dealt with through these actions and that the stystem set forth is more than a dry structuring of the characteristics of movement. Freud's notion of 'transference' and Lacan's understanding of 'repetition' are compared to a performer's usage of the same terms. Thus the book provides a psychoanalytic critique of performance at the same time as it outlines an efficient method for creating live work on both fine art and theatre courses.

A study of the plays of García Lorca, the greatest Spanish dramatist of the twentieth century.

Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art examines a strain of artists spanning more than a century, beginning at the dawn of photography and culminating in the discussion of contemporary artists, to illustrate various psychoanalytic concepts by examining artists working in a multitude of media. Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, who applied psychoanalytic methods to art and literature to decipher the meaning and intention of the creator, as well as Jacques Lacan’s dissemination of scansion as a powerful disruption of narrative, the book explores examples of the long and rich relationship between psychoanalysis and the fine arts. Whilst guiding readers through the different artists and their artforms – from painting and music to poetry, collage, photography, film, performance art, technology and body modification – Sinclair interrogates scansion as a generative process often inherent of the act of creation itself. This is an intriguing book for psychoanalysts, psychologists and creative arts therapists who wish to explore the generative potential of scansion and the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts, as well as for artists and art historians interested in a psychoanalytic view of these processes.

From Aristotle’s theory of tragic katharsis onwards, theorists of the theatre have long engaged with the question of what spectatorship entails. This question has, directly or indirectly, often been extended to the investigation of acting. Acting, Spectating, and the Unconscious approaches the unconscious aspects of spectatorship and acting afresh. Interweaving psychoanalytic descriptions of processes such as transference, unconscious phantasy, and alpha-function with an in-depth survey of theories of spectating and acting from thinkers such as Brecht, Diderot, Rousseau and Plato, Maria Grazia Turri offers a significant insight into the emotions inherent in both the art of the actor, and the spectator’s experience. A compelling investigation of the unconscious communication between spectators and actors, this volume is a must-read for students and scholars fascinated by theatre spectatorship.

The Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis is a unique and original contribution to the field of psychoanalysis. Emphasizing and underscoring the need for interdisciplinary discourse in understanding the dialectical relationship between mind and culture, this volume addresses a multiplicity of realms. These include anthropology, religion, philosophy, history, as well as evolutionary psychology, medicine, race, poverty, migration, and prejudice. Dimensions of social praxis such as education, health policy, and cyberpsychology are also addressed. The enrichment of our understanding of the fine arts (e.g. painting, sculpture, poetry) and performing arts (e.g. music, dance, cinema) by the application of psychoanalytic principles and the enhancement of psychoanalysis by bringing such arts to bear upon it also form areas of this book's concern. This magisterial volume brings distinguished psychoanalysts, philosophers, musicians, poets, businessmen, architects, and movie critics together to create a chorus of modern, anthropologically-informed and culturally sensitive psychoanalysis.