Art and psychoanalysis: among other discourses

This essay, to be published in autumn 2011, is included in the concluding publication for the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies AHRC funded research network on Psychoanalysis and the Arts & Humanities. Malcolm Quinn was part of the Core Programme Committee for this network, which ran from November 2006 to January 2008, which involved him in convening seminars and chairing discussion at the concluding conference Vicissitudes: histories & destinies of psychoanalysis at the IGRS in January 2008.

Rather than find ways to ‘smooth over’ the problems of translation, interpretation and analysis that have conditioned the relationship between art practice and psychoanalysis, this opening seminar used Jacques Lacan’s four discourses of the Master, The University, the Hysteric and the Analyst as a framework for discussion of how the dynamics of misunderstanding between artists, academics and analysts are linked to the operation of the unconscious

Publication to be based on the concluding conference Vicissitudes: histories & destinies of psychoanalysis:

It is sometimes argued that psychoanalysis, now over a century old if we count from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and widely diffused in popularised forms in today’s ‘therapy society’, has run its course as a source of theoretical debate. Within the UK academy, it has had difficulty achieving recognition, since its claims to scientific validity are often disputed, and it is institutionally recognised only in a few departments, poised between social sciences and pure theory. At the same time, as a way of asking questions, it is thriving as never before: in psychoanalytic bodies, at least 20 of which exist in London alone, which train practitioners amid full programmes of seminars, conferences etc; in countries outside the UK, such as Argentina or France, in which psychoanalysis continues to play a marked role in intellectual life; and in UK research practice in the arts & humanities. It is this conjuncture of continuing debate that the new IGRS Network will map and develop.

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