Author’s note: This is Part II of an article about conceptual artist Jane McAdam Freud, which was published on the Huffington Post. Here is the link to
PART ONE.Question: You mentioned during your presentation that psychoanalysis was "more important than ever." Would you elaborate? Answer: When I say we need psychoanalysis more that ever it is of course about the behaviour of the “mass.” The mass or group is made up of individuals who are encompassed within it. If we were, as individuals, mentally/psychologically healthy, we would all understand what empathy means and would have a better chance of applying it. We as the group would act in a more enlightened way and operate better as a society instead of duplicating all our mistakes, generation after generation: at war with each other (individual conflict), which leads to war after war (mass conflict).
Everyone can benefit from psychoanalysis, a time to reflect, to mourn and grieve the mountain of losses one incurs “daily” over a lifetime – after all every decision evokes a loss of sorts. In each choice made we reject all the other possibilities. It is a pity that there is such a stigma attached to mental health issues. Society would benefit if we treated going to the psychoanalyst as sensible, just as going for a regular check-up to the physician is sensible. We could involve psychotherapy in the preventative medicine programme: after all it is to prevent getting ill that we go for a regular check-up. We go for a fitness check so that we can work on the areas that are getting flabby and need more work.
You added, "especially in politics." The wisdom in psychoanalysis and in art is that it sheds light on “prohibited” forces that are not yet conscious. Concepts like empathy are the crux of D.W. Winnicott’s (British pediatrician/relational psychoanalyst) work, which might inform international diplomacy to avert wars and other mass violence. In Fog of War, director Errol Morris presented U.S. Secretary of State Robert S. McNamara discussing how the Cuban Missile Crisis--a potential nuclear disaster--was avoided because President Kennedy chose to trust the empathic view of a diplomat who lived with Soviet Prime Minister Kruschev over the advice of war-obsessed generals like Curtis Lamay. You’ve said it all really! Empathy and politics? They don’t really go together (any more). Politics is more of a business now than it used to be. Once upon a time in what seems the distant past we thought the government’s job was to look after the people (left or right, right or wrong, morally, intellectually and financially). It’s a great pity that when we gave up on the fantasy of a parental, god-like figure, such as a government minister we gave it up so totally. We didn’t keep something akin to empathy towards the concerns and expectations of the nation on an ethical level as part of a value system.
We are doing better on that front now, in the U.S. with Obama who sets a series of good psychological examples with his behavior, one of his first being the inclusivity of his cabinet (bringing his opponents into the group). I think that it is necessary for figure heads to take on the responsibility for setting the examples. I worry for Obama that he is carrying the load for the lack of responsibility we are taking in “the Western world” for our struggling “relative relations” in Africa. If he is indeed the “emotionally intelligent” leader we take him for then he must be struggling himself with thoughts of if and how to help through political channels: making possible the impossible idea of distributing some of our wealth to those in dying need.
Psychologically speaking, an example of empathy being an important quality even at a government level would filter down and help people deal with the void in the face of an intellectually godless society or at least deal with the ambiguities that we are destined to live with if god does indeed live on for us.
We need to rethink our system of separating the mind from the body. This could be part of political policy. Perhaps in considering the current national health issues in the U.S., we might look more holistically rather than separating the parts out and attending to one separated out part on its own. Even the body as a system doesn’t function separately as Dr. Von Hagens (the controversial anatomist cum artist who invented the preservation process known as plastination) found out while making his work for “Body Worlds” (his exhibit of human cadavers) which examined and displayed the organs and systems inextricably interlinked in the body.
A critical understanding of the repetition compulsion—the unconscious, pathological state whereby we are doomed to repeat situations in which dark forces are repressed and traumatic events dissociated that occurs in individuals and on group levels—might be a subject of greater study for governments and international organizations, yet one never hears of psychoanalysts tapped to join diplomatic delegations or political think tanks. Were these lines of thought implicit in your statement? Yes, exactly that.
If so, can you elaborate? We keep having wars, every generation. Nothing is learnt. All mistakes are remade politically and otherwise. This needs to be addressed, urgently I would have thought.
Also, is it present in some of your work? E.g., “US and Them,” which I understand represents the United States as the large whole apple on the obverse and European countries as half apples on the reverse.“US and Them,” cast in bronze references the big apple, the United States, opposite Europe as half apples. The piece evokes notions of ownership regarding nature and is a nostalgic work commemorating pre-history, as in “The Garden of Eden,” according to the artist’s statement.
Well about the apples, yes I was thinking that now there is no opposing force (the previous USSR) in terms of a world power. The global world is now the U.S. so in reality – even though the Middle Eastern world is fighting it we are all countries potentially dominated by the culture of the USA. It is easier for Europeans as we are from a western capitalistic culture. However we are losing our independent characteristics and will inevitably be consumed by the big apple. European countries are diluted Americas, sort of half apples, not quite the whole thing but part of it.
The piece is a vital example of the predictive and cautionary power of art and the infectious nature of uniformity stemming from the (super) power of authority. Psychoanalytic concepts and art are such thorns in the sides of governments and people, especially the most conservative and repressive, because by their very nature they cut through resistance and repression. Like dreams, art is the “royal road to the unconscious.” If one considers the power of a work like Picasso's "Guernica," or the documentary Crazy by Heddy Honigmann (about Dutch U.N. peacekeeping forces, "the blue helmets,"sent into countries with active genocides—who came home so traumatized the only thing that brought them back to a semblance of humanity was the beauty and emotion in music). There are many examples of films and other art that is prophetic and healing yet artists are not consulted about their vision. Very interesting the idea that artists might be consulted, our ideas tapped. I believe that we (artists) pick up on the collective unconscious that contains no time in a constructed sense and so we are a conduit for ideas and actions (potential and actual) in the ether. The artist’s sensibility and imagination are such that we operate like a collective voice for all that cannot be spoken or even thought (thought being a conscious act). All that is unexplained, perhaps unexplainable in terms of human behaviour and motivation that could be put down to a spiritual or other force is in my view, unconsciously driven. The unconscious operates much like we believe God operates but without the sentimentality. Art is not sentimental. It doesn’t judge either. It simply presents with all the human integrity possible what is in the ether, i.e., what everybody may feel on some level.
It is the nature of artists to think independently and so have imagination without judgment in other words not to come down on either side but simply to explore and present ideas.
Artists have been and still are seen (in the time they live, i.e., not necessarily in hindsight) as mad, bad and sad. This is a description of non-conformity. Difference spells fear. Unfortunately due to very little publication or positive education about artists’ intentions, this myth prevails, adding a sort of credence in the face of a public information void. These beliefs are not of course applicable to the enlightened, the intellectuals or the art-related institutions that conversely hold art in very high esteem as a cultural imperative. Art is culture. Culture is Art. (By art I mean all its expressions: 2D, 3D, film, music, literature, etc.).
One of the many things you found that you and Sigmund had in common was a kind of annoyance or dislike of music. Music cuts so very quickly to deep emotions, which may be uncomfortable for some people. Does music affect you this way? I don’t feel confident or qualified to talk about music. Its process escapes me. I like to understand process. I agree that music can go very deep and when it does I find it primordial and overwhelming. One example of this was my experience of hearing the didgeridoo (an ancient instrument originating with the aboriginal peoples of Australia). I had to walk out. It was so disorientating with nothing to hang the feeling on!
“A tie is not just a tie.”
Ties and authority: A cigar may be just a cigar, but, in your work, a tie is not just a tie. Can you elaborate on this sculpture? Was it a single piece or a series? How might it relate to politics? The ties began with a self portrait where the clay dried and the head severed from the body. Left with the collar I added a tie and recognized the visual similarity with the phallus. I thought about Freud’s ideas about objects standing in for the phallus and about the idea of male authority and the ego, about tall phallic looking authoritative buildings –the phallus as a symbol of power.
Later I did an online residency with the department of Ancient Egypt at the British Museum where I studied the Shabti figures and their connection to Osiris. Osiris with his staff and flail is the Egyptian symbol of authority. The Shabti figures are based on Osiris and are in the shape of a sarcophagus. The neck tie is remarkably similar to the shapes of these ancient Shabti figures. We never give anything up we just change its form as established by Helmholtz in his conservation of energy equation where he conceives that energy cannot be destroyed. Osiris is indeed living on and stares back at us from each other’s chests!
McAdam Freud’s “Sisyphus,” in which her looser style is reminiscent of the exposed, vulnerable, and sometimes angst-ridden figures in the work of father Lucian. Rafey adds that the artist is “successful in conveying weight and mass to the boulder as well as strength and perseverance to Sisyphus.”
From what I could see from your wide variety of artwork, your "Sisyphus" looks most like images (in terms of style and tone) one might find in your father's paintings. “Sisyphus” is made in a very loose style and perhaps that is what you are picking up on.
How has your current work evolved since the PUPS and your days as an artist in residence at the Freud Museum? The medium, which I call PUPS was something I was driven to work with without knowing why. Since doing my residency at the Freud Museum and finding that Sigmund collected these forms, I was liberated. My work is more installation-based now. “Sweet Relief,” from McAdam Freud’s recent two-person, installation-based exhibit entitled, “Two Gether.” Much larger in scale and described by the artist as “two parts coming together—a completion.”
--Penelope Andrew
WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE/AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS IN CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK
(end part II)
