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Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
As a young candidate transferring from the field of performing arts and theory into psychoanalysis, I am struck by their provocative resonances. In addition to theoretical connections I have noticed between psychoanalysis and performing arts/performance studies, resonances emerge from actual practice on the one hand and, on the other, thoughts concerning the analytic community's place and role in contemporary society. In this short text, I will focus on the first, keeping in mind the latter, which deserves an elaboration of its own.
In thinking about the role of the analyst and the analysand, as well as the analytic space itself, one word keeps popping up in my mind: Verfremdungseffekt (vɜːˈfɹɛmduŋsəˌfɛkt), aka V-effekt (fɑʊəˌfɛkt) — a performance technique developed by Bertolt Brecht for actors of his “epic theatre.”
Verfremdungseffekt is one of those German words difficult to grasp in translation, and theatre people often use the original as a technical term. The common English translations are “distancing effect,” “alienation effect,” and, in my opinion, the most accurate and faithful to Brecht's actual intention, the “estrangement effect.” The technique's goal is to make the familiar strange, in order to provoke a new insight that triggers a social-critical audience response.
But first things first: German leftist playwright, director, poet, and theorist Bertolt Brecht was arguably one of the most significant figures in the history of twentieth-century art. Not only did he revolutionize the field of theatre and performing arts, but his theatrical innovations from the 1920s and '30s have also paved a new way to politically and socially engaged art and remain influential to this day.