Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski (Editors),  Phoenix Publishing House, 2023,  200 pp., ISBN: 978-1-912691-95-1

Published online: 22 June 2025

© The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025

Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain is a multilayered analysis of influences, primarily the influence of Sigmund Freud upon David Lynch. It began as a collection of papers given during a conference at the Freud Museum London. The subtitle, “Behind the Curtain” references Lynch’s use of the curtain in his films and television series Twin Peaks (Frost & Lynch, 1990–1991; 2017), alluding to the “other room,” “a description strikingly analogous to the famous ‘other scene’ in which Freud located the unconscious” (p. xiv). This is further reflected in the process of veiling and unveiling that occurs throughout this book, which relates to the Greek aletheia. Akin to Lynch’s work, instead of explaining outright, each chapter of the book pulls back another curtain of dreamwork. Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain is a collection of prolific and inventive essays that cut across artistic genres and boundaries to construct a new type of critical engagement.

To convey the intellectual and artistic layers of influence, book editors, Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski assemble “the spirit of both Freud and Lynch: a spirit of radical openness to the new and the unexpected, of questioning rather than answering, of opening things up rather than closing them down” (p. xvii). The book constructs multiple perspectives of supplemental layers and exchanges between the analytic and artistic subjects. It shows how Freudian analytic processes of “remembering, repeating and working through” are reinvented by Lynch in serial screen form and explores what Carol Owens calls our “Lynchian” moment where the artist’s works is no longer bizarre, but a reflection of “the way a culture enjoys