This spring, in the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence, Italy, the city will host another manner of “renaissance” for the intersecting and interdependent fields of psychoanalysis and art. Co-chairs Laurie Wilson and Graziella Magherini will host The Sixth International Symposium on Psychoanalysis and Art to be held on May 15-17, 2014. This conference, “Art/Object: the Artist, the Object, the Patron and the Audience,” brings together leading scholars on art, literature, music, psychoanalysis and neuroscience in sessions to be held at a 14th century cloister, Chiostro del Maglio.
There will be two plenary addresses: The renowned art historian, David Freedberg (The Power of Images), will address “Art, Empathy and Neuroscience,” which will be discussed by Vittorio Gallese, the eminent neuroscientist. Distinguished choral conductor and music director, David Rosenmeyer (Oratorio Society of New York), will present “Mahler: Death and Rebirth in Song,” which will be discussed by musicologist Alexandra Amati-Camperi. From these two plenary addresses, one can see the interdisciplinary dialogue that informs the vision of this conference.
Indeed, by bringing together the worlds of neuroscience, music and art through the language of psychoanalysis, the cultural field is expanded to position sciences and art in dynamic discussion, reviving Sigmund Freud's original vision of the “psychoanalytic academy” enunciated in The Question of Lay Analysis, where he invokes “the evolution of human civilization and its major institutions such as art, religion and the social order” as the ultimate forum for the psychoanalytic enterprise. The Florence Interdisciplinary symposium on art and literature is a living tribute to such a vision, which Freud felt would promise a future for psychoanalysis. As outlined in my 2009 paper in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the “imbrication [of psychoanalysis] in the full matrix of cultural knowledge” remains crucial to the health, endurance and flourishing of both clinical and cultural psychoanalysis.
The symposium will take up the ways psychoanalysis continues to learn from and continues to illuminate art, visual culture and material culture. For example, Jane McAdam Freud, the sculptor and great-granddaughter of Freud, will present a paper entitled “In the Mould of the Fathers—Objects of Sculpture, Subjects of Legacy.” Donald Kuspit (The Death of Art) will address “Collecting: A Narcissistic Agony,” to which Mary Kay O'Neil will respond with her paper, “The Analyst as Collector.” Gennaro Saragnano, chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association's Publication Committee, will moderate a roundtable discussion on art and psychoanalytic publications, while other talks will explore art in relation to broad societal issues including “Fashion as Fetish,” by art historian and fashion writer, Amy Fine Collins.
Other interdisciplinary talks will explore art in relation to broad societal issues such as “Belgian Modernism and Imperial Violence in the 1890s,” by art historian Deborah Silverman (Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art), to which psychoanalyst and theater consultant Phillip Freeman will respond with a contemporary critique of violence in contemporary theater and virtual culture. Segueing into the contemporary scene, and in a testimony to the enduring capacity of psychoanalysis to invent and reinvent itself through the arts, my own paper, “Alison's Autographics,” will discuss cartoonist Alison Bechdel's invocation of D.W. Winnicott, as “muse” to her nascent self. By turning to graphic narrative as an emerging genre in this symposium, we are once again witness to psychoanalysis's never shying away from any aspect of creativity and culture, a claim to which Adele Tutter will respond with further reflections on “the psychoanalytic muse” as pervasive in modern culture.
This international symposium pays credence to the true power of psychoanalysis. The life that psychoanalysis has found and will continue to find in the arts and humanities contradicts the laments we often hear regarding the diminished interest in psychoanalysis in our fast-paced world. This symposium suggests an ongoing renaissance in the cultural field, placing art where Freud placed it: at the very core of his vision for both clinical and cultural analysis. For as he makes very clear: “the use of analysis for the treatment of the neuroses is only one of its applications; the future will perhaps show that it is not the most important one.”
Freud's challenging prediction suggests that as analysts, artists, critics, patrons, journalists, educators, and audience, we have powerful cultural tools that derive from clinical contexts in a mutually enriching and creative communion of body, mind and spirit. It is our hope and expectation that this gathering in Florence will celebrate such creativity in the spirit of its founder's vision for psychoanalysis, culture and society. Please join us in Florence. For more information visit .
Vera J. Camden, Ph.D., is professor of English at Kent State University and training and supervising analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. She is a member of the Committee on Research and Special Training and co-editor of American Imago.