Wagner's Parsifal and the Challenge to Psychoanalysis

Forthcoming Freud Museum Conference

Abstract

In our conference 'Wagner, Freud and the End of Myth' (2013) we argued that by taking the mythic dimension and bringing it into the human realm, Wagner anticipated Freud in his depiction of unconscious processes of the mind. It could be said that Freud and Wagner were dealing with the same stuff - the "fundamental psychosexual issues that affect us all" as Barry Millington put it, and for that reason a fruitful dialogue can exist between their two bodies of work.

The present conference is entirely devoted to Wagner's final masterpiece, Parsifal, and explores whether this sublime, troubling and contentious work prefigures psychoanalytic insight or resists psychoanalytic interpretation. As a story of compassion and redemption, which nevertheless describes a world of perversion and mental anguish, what can Parsifal tell us about the secret springs of human desire and the conflicts of human nature? And how did Wagner manage to create it?

Speakers

Stephen Gee (biog)
Wagner's Parsifal: A Hymn of Purity and Danger (abstract)

Eva Rieger (biog)
Kundry's kiss and the fear of female desire: A gender perspective (abstract)

Tom DeRose (biog)
Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche in Berlin (abstract)

Mark Berry (biog)
Interpreting Wagner's Dreams: Staging Parsifal in the Twenty-First Century (abstract)

Tom Artin (biog)
Primal Scene/Primal Wound: The psychoanalytic arc of Parsifal (abstract)

Karin Nohr (biog) and Sebastian Leikert (biog)
Dr Kundry's Failure (abstract)

Patrick Carnegy (biog)
Syberberg's Parsifal and the soul of Germany (abstract)

Booking

Full Price: £64
Students/Concessions: £48
£6 Reduction for Members of the Freud Museum. 

Please click here for online booking

To become a member of the museum, please click here.

For further information please contact Tom DeRose or Ivan Ward, or call the Museum on +44 (0) 207 435 2002.