In its various guises, Psychoanalysis has never failed to provoke fantasies and controversy in the socio-cultural imagination and the cinematic screen with things “Freudian” invariably signalling a sexy and/or bizarre theme. From Hitchcock through to Lynch the Oedipus complex and the unconscious are often central and reliable foci, almost meriting a credit of their own. The figure of the psychoanalyst or “subject-supposed-to-know ” and the potentially endless process of analysis have also been the butt of many satirical and comic takes, not least in the prolific filmography of Woody Allen. Curiously however, Freud did not believe that psychoanalysis could be represented accurately through film and was himself resistant to appearing on camera.
This festival asks , what can film represent of Freud’s “talking cure” and the conception of the psychoanalytic clinic as it has existed both in its previous incarnations and today. What do these representations say about the relation of culture to psychoanalysis? What do these characterisations of therapy and/or analysis perform in 21st century culture?
Programme Friday 1st February.
Friday 1st February 6pm. Screening of The Meeting in the company of
Director Alan Gilsenan, Producer Tomas Hardiman, Psychotherapist Dr. Marie Keenan and Ailbhe Griffith.
Discussion hosted and chaired by Olga Cox Cameron
8.30 Wine Reception
Programme Saturday February 2nd.
Parallel Screenings 9.30am-11.50am.
Theme: From Neurotic Misery to Ordinary Unhappiness
Ordinary People – Barbara Fitzgerald
Jimmy P – Michelle Sludds Hickey
The Lives of Others – Gen Watters
Another Woman – Sarah Meehan
11.50- 12. 05. Coffee
12.05-1.30 p.m. Screening from the BBC Archives 1972 dramatization ofFreud’s Case study of The Rats Man
In the company of Prof. Dany Nobus
Respondent – Rik Loose
1.30-2 pm Lunch
2 -4.20pm Film Screening Session II: To be a Therapist?
Bad Timing – Carol Owens
Mad to be Normal – Donna Redmond and Ross Skelton
Spellbound – Veronica Johnson NUIG
Now Voyager – Marie Walshe
4.20 -4.35pm Tea
4.35-6pm First Irish screening of historical documentary:
Sigmund Freud, His Family and Colleagues. By Philip Rafael Lehrman
In the company of Prof. Dany Nobus
Respondent: Olga Cox Cameron
