Reading Group: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture in Historical Perspective
30 May, 6.30pm
Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square
This open reading group will look at key texts in the history of psychoanalysis, exploring their potential connections to visual culture.
Readings are intended for anyone who’s interested in delving into this literature with a like minded group of non-experts from disciplines across art history, visual culture, film and media studies etc.
For the first session on Wednesday 30 May, 6.30pm in the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, we’ve picked three texts from the mid-twentieth century related to British Object Relations:
– Ronald Fairbairn, ‘The War Neuroses – their Nature and Signifcance’ (1943)
– Donald Winnicott, ‘Playing: Its Theoretical Status in the Clinical Situation’ (1968)
and… not directly associated with object relations but a key point of reference…
– Melanie Klein, ‘On the Sense of Loneliness’ (1963)
Readings in links above, or available to download via google drive here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I5SBj_5Zb_V-wEbH4dddpd00zzsK5ynT?usp=sharing
If you’re only able to read one or two of the texts, please do still come along. We’re also inviting people to bring 2-3 images that they’re working on – to help spark our visual thinking and draw out any potential connections, applications, tangents etc.
Assuming there’s an appetite to continue the readings, we’ll pick the texts and date for the next session following on from this first one. Please bring suggestions for readings if you have them!
To RSVP and for more information, please contact:
Alistair Cartwright (Birkbeck, History of Art) — alistaircartwright@gmail.com
Christy Slobogin (Birkbeck, History of Art) — cslobo01@mail.bbk.ac.uk