| Lutecium a non-school of Lacanian/Freudian Psychoanalysis San Francisco, California |
| Community Seminar Lacan, Freud, and Taylor, and the Structure of Anxiety with Rebecca Bauknight Ph.D. |
To further pursue the complex ideas of anxiety that we visited last seminar, I thought it would be interesting to revisit Freud’s paper
on Inhibition, Symptoms, and Anxiety and then move into Sue Taylor’s focused psychoanalytic reading of the Hans Bellmer Dolls.
Bellmer stages life sized dolls in extremely provocative, twisted, pornographic and distorted positions. Bellmer was well acquainted
with psychoanalysis and details his own conceptual thinking regarding his art productions... providing interesting insight into the
object world that he draws from. Taylor analyzes text, representations, and Bellmer’s exposure to Freud, along with Bellmer’s
personal struggles to understand what drove his obsessions, fixations, fetishism, his art ... why Bellmer’s art plays itself out so
brutally towards the feminine with regard to his own identification with the feminine position.
Interestingly, there is a connection with machinery, mechanics, well -oiled gadgets and systems that fit together through a symphonic
completion of fit and exchange. In Bellmer’s “Notes on the Subject of the Ball Joint,” he indicates that sexual difference cannot be
acknowledged and must be denied. The fantasy of equivalence is depicted in his art work “Gear Wheels” which provide a sort of
fantasy of fit through a depiction of physical rotation based on gaps and protrusions. Here it appears that both pieces that use each
other to rotate are in fact exactly alike. A highly mechanical view of unity and rotation. Taylor addresses Bellmer’s confusion
regarding the maternal body... imaginary phallus...imaginary perfections..that overlay his fear and anxiety of castration.
Through Taylor’s work we can appreciate that theories and discourses that underscore fantasies of seamlessness within and without
are based on the same fetishistic tendencies that belie pornography. Pornography although more expressively and overtly
aggressive has a definitive link to the aggressive nature of psychoanalytic discourses that attempt to disavow castration through
similar identifications. Devaluations and idealizations of the Maternal as containing or mechanistically fitting with the infant. Images
of perfect, good enough fit, the container and the contained, are basically ways of disavowing intercourse and ameliorating the
anxiety of castration that exists within the space of difference... the defining moment of Psychoanalysis. I argue that psychoanalytic
theories (object relations, intersubjective, interrelational) that attempt to erase this mark are based on a disavowal related to
perversion and an inordinate desire to be placed in the position of the perfect phallus to the Mother... the fantasized instrument that
completes her jouissance.
on Inhibition, Symptoms, and Anxiety and then move into Sue Taylor’s focused psychoanalytic reading of the Hans Bellmer Dolls.
Bellmer stages life sized dolls in extremely provocative, twisted, pornographic and distorted positions. Bellmer was well acquainted
with psychoanalysis and details his own conceptual thinking regarding his art productions... providing interesting insight into the
object world that he draws from. Taylor analyzes text, representations, and Bellmer’s exposure to Freud, along with Bellmer’s
personal struggles to understand what drove his obsessions, fixations, fetishism, his art ... why Bellmer’s art plays itself out so
brutally towards the feminine with regard to his own identification with the feminine position.
Interestingly, there is a connection with machinery, mechanics, well -oiled gadgets and systems that fit together through a symphonic
completion of fit and exchange. In Bellmer’s “Notes on the Subject of the Ball Joint,” he indicates that sexual difference cannot be
acknowledged and must be denied. The fantasy of equivalence is depicted in his art work “Gear Wheels” which provide a sort of
fantasy of fit through a depiction of physical rotation based on gaps and protrusions. Here it appears that both pieces that use each
other to rotate are in fact exactly alike. A highly mechanical view of unity and rotation. Taylor addresses Bellmer’s confusion
regarding the maternal body... imaginary phallus...imaginary perfections..that overlay his fear and anxiety of castration.
Through Taylor’s work we can appreciate that theories and discourses that underscore fantasies of seamlessness within and without
are based on the same fetishistic tendencies that belie pornography. Pornography although more expressively and overtly
aggressive has a definitive link to the aggressive nature of psychoanalytic discourses that attempt to disavow castration through
similar identifications. Devaluations and idealizations of the Maternal as containing or mechanistically fitting with the infant. Images
of perfect, good enough fit, the container and the contained, are basically ways of disavowing intercourse and ameliorating the
anxiety of castration that exists within the space of difference... the defining moment of Psychoanalysis. I argue that psychoanalytic
theories (object relations, intersubjective, interrelational) that attempt to erase this mark are based on a disavowal related to
perversion and an inordinate desire to be placed in the position of the perfect phallus to the Mother... the fantasized instrument that
completes her jouissance.
| This Seminar meets 6pm - 8pm on Thursdays: 9/9, 9/23, 10/7, 10/21,11/4, & 11/18 Flood Building, 870 Market Street San Francisco This seminar will also be webcasted live |
Seminar Fee: $400