Laurence Simmons

Freud’s Italian Journey takes the psychoanalytical texts of Freud on the visual arts and literature as its objects for analysis. While the biographical figure of Freud appears throughout its pages, it is not simply a psychobiographical reading of Freud, his personal circumstances and their relationship to his texts. Rather the processes of interpretation begun by Freud are turned on Freud himself, thus eventually displacing and questioning his theoretical mastery. Freud’s Italian Journey also argues that Freud’s interest in, frequent journeys to, and obsession with Italy profoundly shaped and informed his elaboration of psychoanalysis. The volume organizes its material around the major Italian cities which were the destinations of Freud’s travel, and the sites of the artworks he examined. Freud’s many Italian holidays were crucial for his self-analysis and methodology, but it is also argued here that his papers on Italian subjects must be read as texts marked by fascination and allurement, crossed with anxiety and resistance, inscribed by memory and forgetting. Journeys to Italy heightened Freud’s sense of the visual, and it is contended that the visual dimension of Freud’s writing is crucial to an understanding of his elaboration of the theory of psychoanalysis. The relation between image and text is at the heart of Freud’s analysis of works of art as he founds a critical methodology in which the two are interrelated, image illustrating idea and idea needing to express itself in image, but neither finally resolvable into the other. Thus the argument of Freud’s Italian Journey follows as its model the famous elaboration of the fort:da game by Freud, moving back and forth between Freud’s life and his texts, between psychoanalytical and philosophical systems, between the written and the visual. This leads to the broader conclusion that Freud might provide the key to a new practice of criticism, and a new way of ‘seeing’ and understanding visual images.

Freud's Italian Journey

Philip Armstrong

Drawing on a range of perspectives -philosophy, literary criticism, art history and cultural studies-the essays collected here explore unconventional ways of knowing animals, offering new insights into apparently familiar relationships between humans and other living beings.

Knowing Animals

Freud's Italian Journey takes the psychoanalytical texts of Freud on the visual arts and literature as its objects for analysis. While the biographical figure of Freud appears throughout its pages, it is not simply a psychobiographical reading of Freud, his personal circumstances and their relationship to his texts. Rather the processes of interpretation begun by Freud are turned on Freud himself, thus eventually displacing and questioning his theoretical mastery. Freud's Italian Journey also argues that Freud's interest in, frequent journeys to, and obsession with Italy profoundly shaped and informed his elaboration of psychoanalysis. The volume organizes its material around the major Italian cities which were the destinations of Freud's travel, and the sites of the artworks he examined. Freud's many Italian holidays were crucial for his self-analysis and methodology, but it is also argued here that his papers on Italian subjects must be read as texts marked by fascination and allurement, crossed with anxiety and resistance, inscribed by memory and forgetting. Journeys to Italy heightened Freud's sense of the visual, and it is contended that the visual dimension of Freud's writing is crucial to an understanding of his elaboration of the theory of psychoanalysis. The relation between image and text is at the heart of Freud's analysis of works of art as he founds a critical methodology in which the two are interrelated, image illustrating idea and idea needing to express itself in image, but neither finally resolvable into the other. Thus the argument of Freud's Italian Journey follows as its model the famous elaboration of the fort: da game by Freud, moving back and forth between Freud's life and his texts, between psychoanalytical and philosophical systems, between the written and the visual. This leads to the broader conclusion that Freud might provide the key to a new practice of criticism, and a new way of 'seeing' and understanding visual images.

Žižek through Hitchcock

David Lynch is no stranger to scholars, critics and fans. From his first feature Eraserhead (1977), Lynch's films present us with a provocative world of weirdness and fantasy. Most work on Lynch uses a specific lens to assess his work, whether it's looking at the religious undertones to his films or his influence of music to his soundtracks. Laurence Simmons' work fills an important gap in the scholarship by looking at the acclaimed and influential director from all angles. Structured to meet the needs of both the student and scholar, Simmons' volume situates Lynch within his historical and critical context, exploring key collaborative relationships and new ways of watching his films. Beginning with Lynch's biography, Simmons surveys the evolution of Lynch's life and career from growing up in Northwest Montana and Boise Idaho, a 1950s childhood that is parodied in Blue Velvet (1986) to the interaction of his work as painter, record producer, song composer and comic strip artist with his work in cinema, and finally to opening up a new nightclub in France, Silencio (based on the club of the same name in Mulholland Drive).The volume includes two critical essays that examine Lynch's body of work by reconsidering the problem of cinematic realism in his work in the light of the emergent philosophical movement known as Speculative Realism. Through a close reading of a number of films (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, The Straight Story) this chapter considers the potential relevance of Lynch's modification of theories of cinematic realism and his affirmation of cinema as a medium that has the capacity to affirm things-in-themselves without the presumption of a priori schemas of knowledge. Concluding with an appendix detailing key critical works and further reading and viewing, this volume is an essential addition to any institution where film scholarship and teaching occur.

Laurence Simmons

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