Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable From culture to the
clinic, 1st Edition
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This anthology sets out to “do the impossible” in interrogating the paradoxes
of unrepresentable and unspeakable experience. Drawing together an impres-
sive array of writers from diverse fields including those of clinical practice,
film and literary studies, post-colonial theory and cultural analysis, it weaves
a complex matrix of ideas grounded in the work of psychoanalytic thinkers
as diverse as Freud, Lacan, Bion, Malabou, Winnicott and Meltzer. The essays
are lively and compelling, offering new perspectives on themes such as
trauma and embodiment, silence and invisibility in the digital age of media,
the psychodynamics of touch, voice, gesture, love, grief, adoption and anxiety.
A wide range of textual material embracing literature, cinema, poetry, lan-
guage, meta psychology and metaphysics, provides the basis for philosophical
and psychological commentary that is often astute, and the daring inclusion
of creative work premised on personal experience acts as an emotional coup de
foudre. Piotrowska and Tyrer have curated a cracking compendium, one that
seduces and challenges in equal measure, and one that will surely become
essential reading for anyone interested in the riches of psychoanalytic enquiry.
—Caroline Bainbridge, Professor of Culture and Psychoanalysis,
University of Roehampton, UK.
This is an important collection that speaks to contemporary events with
compassion and poignancy. Piotrowska and Tyrer’s Psychoanalysis and the
Unrepresentable: From culture to the clinic is simultaneously wound and suture.
It both opens and seeks to comprehend the cultural fault lines that exist
around trauma, abuse, race, image and language itself. These diverse, and at
times provocative, essays, allow for an outpouring of the unconscious and the
experience of pain and anxiety. It is the inability to speak with the inability
to be silent that suffuses this radical collection and yet it is these same tensions
in this book that serve to heal the cultural body.
—Luke Hockley, Professor of Media Analysis,
University of Bedfordshire, UK and author of Somatic Cinema (2014).
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Psychoanalysis and
the Unrepresentable
From culture to the clinic
Edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Piotrowska, Agnieszka, editor. | Tyrer, Ben, editor.
Title: Psychoanalysis and the unrepresentable: from culture to the clinic /
edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016008666| ISBN 9781138954977 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138954984 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315666655 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis.
Classification: LCC BF173 .P77527 2016 | DDC 150.19/5—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008666
ISBN: 978-1-138-95497-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-95498-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66665-5 (ebk)
Typeset in BemboStd
by codeMantra
Contents
Figures xi
Contributors xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction: Representing the unrepresentable 1
Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer
Part I
Approaching trauma 5
1 The body locked by a lack of meaning 7
Katrine Zeuthen and Marie Hagelskjær
2 Trauma without a subject: On Malabou,
psychoanalysis and Amour 20
Ben Tyrer
3 A possible way to represent the unrepresentable
in clinical trauma 39
Yaelle Sibony-Malpertu
Part II
Sense and gesture 51
4 (Un)Representing the real: Seeing sounds and hearing images 53
Thomas Elsaesser
viii Contents
5 On touching and speaking in (post) (de) colonial
discourse – From Lessing to Marechera and Veit-Wild 74
Agnieszka Piotrowska
6 Pointing at the other 94
Goran Vranešević
Part III
Impossible poetics 109
7 Is poetics a fiction about truth – in a poem? Some
remarks about Paul Celan 111
René Rasmussen
8 Presenting the unrepresentable in presentable ways 118
Pia Hylén
9 Duras and the art of the impossible 130
Carin Franzén
Part IV
Without words 141
10 Representation without language: Freud and the
problem of the image 143
Annie Hardy
11 Understanding without words 158
John Miller
Part V
Wounds and suture 169
12 Rethinking the primal wound, trauma and the fantasy of
completeness: Adopted women’s experiences of meeting their
biological fathers in adulthood 171
Elizabeth Joyce
13 Embodying traumatic griefscapes 185
Per Roar
14 Suture and Gus Van Sant’s Milk 203
Richard Rushton
Contents ix
Part VI
Auto/Fiction 217
15 Unnameable 219
Anna Backman Rogers
16 Each day at a time – A daily intervention into loss 222
Myna Trustram
17 The scent of philosophy 231
Birthe Tranberg Nikolajsen
Index 237
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figures
2.1 Georges and Anne at breakfast in Amour (2012),
dir. Michael Haneke: Amour_michael_haneke©2012 Les
Films Du Losange – X Filme Creative Pool – Wega Film25
2.2 Georges’ dream in Amour (2012), dir. Michael Haneke:
Amour_michael_haneke©2012 Les Films Du Losange –
X Filme Creative Pool – Wega Film28
2.3 Georges in Amour (2012), dir. Michael Haneke:
Amour_michael_haneke©2012 Les Films Du Losange –
X Filme Creative Pool – Wega Film31
2.4 Anne in Amour (2012), dir. Michael Haneke:
Amour_michael_haneke©2012 Les Films Du Losange –
X Filme Creative Pool – Wega Film33
5.1 Ery Nzaramba and Sonja Wirhol from a shoot of Flora and
Dambudzo (2014) Dir/Prod A.Piotrowska. DoP. Joe Njagu 87
5.2 Shooting Flora and Dambudzo. Agnieszka Piotrowska
and Joe Njagu. ©Agnieszka Piotrowska 87
13.1 Audience watching. Photo by Fuco Fuoxos – Vijećnica,
Sarajevo 2006 188
13.2 Circle. Photo by Fuco Fuoxos – Vijećnica, Sarajevo 2006 191
13.3 Crawling. Photo by Fuco Fuoxos – Vijećnica, Sarajevo 2006 196
16.1 Collection of flowers. Photographer: Mary Stark225
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CONTRIBUTORS
Anna Backman Rogers, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at The Univer-
sity of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is the author of American Independent Cinema: Rites
of Passage and The Crisis-Image (EUP, 2015) and the co-editor, with Laura Mulvey of
Feminisms (AUP, 2015). She is currently writing a book on the films of Sofia Cop-
pola entitled The Politics of Visual Pleasure for Berghahn.
Thomas Elsaesser, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Media and Cul-
ture of the University of Amsterdam. From 2006 to 2012 he was Visiting Professor
at Yale University and since 2013 teaches part-time at Columbia University. For
more information and recent publications: www.thomas-elsaesser.com.
Carin Franzén, PhD, is Professor in Comparative Literature at Linköping Univer-
sity. She has published various articles and books on literature and psychoanalysis as
well as on medieval and early modern literature.
Marie Hagelskjær has a MSc in Psychology and is a PhD scholar at the Department
of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her main area of research is
infantile sexuality and prevention and assessment of child sexual abuse, where she
focuses on developing and testing assessment methods.
Annie Hardy is a PhD candidate at University College London where her research
interests focus on visual thought and philosophical issues in psychology and psy-
choanalysis. She came to the department after obtaining an MA in Philosophy from
the University of Edinburgh and an Msc in Theoretical Psychoanalysis from UCL.
Pia Hylén is a psychoanalyst and a psychologist and the current Vice President of
Antena do Campo Freudiano, Center of Psychoanalytic Study in Lisbon. She was
xiv Contributors
educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Copenha-
gen. She did her psychoanalysis at École de la Cause Freudienne in Paris and has
trained as a TFP therapist with Dr Kernberg at Cornell Medical Center. She has
written numerous psychological and psychoanalytical articles, lately in Drift (Journal
for Psychoanalysis) and Afreudite (Revista Lusófona de Psicanálise Pura e Aplicada). She
is an artist and a poet and has published Au bord du continent, a collection of poetry
illustrated with her aquarelles and croquis. Pia Hylén is a member of AMP, EFP,
NLS and CEP and has her private practice in Lisbon.
John Miller is a psychoanalyst who originally trained under people who worked
with C.G. Jung but has since come to work in the post-Kleinian tradition, as a result
of a long association with the late Donald Meltzer. He has a background in educa-
tion, where he worked for a number of years as an Educational Psychologist. He is
the author of The Triumphant Victim (Karnac, 2013) and Do You Read Me? (Karnac,
2015). He is in full-time practice in Oxford.
Agnieszka Piotrowska, PhD, is an award winning documentary filmmaker and a
theorist, best known for her film Married to the Eiffel Tower (2009). Her new work
in both practice and theory focuses on post-colonial relationships in Zimbabwe,
including an internationally acclaimed documentary film Lovers in Time or How
We Didn’t Get Arrested in Harare. She is the author of Psychoanalysis and Ethics
in Documentary Film and the editor of Embodied Encounters: New approaches to
psychoanalysis and cinema, both published by Routledge. Her new monograph
Black and White: Cinema, politics and the arts in Zimbabwe (Routledge, 2016) com-
bines practice research with theory. She is co-coordinator of the Psychoanalysis in
Our Time research network.
René Rasmussen, PhD, Associate Professor in Danish Literature at the Department
of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, and psychoanalyst.
Selected publications: (2000) Bjelke lige i øjet—om Henrik Bjelkes forfatterskab (Bjelke
Bull’s-eye—on the Authorship of Henrik Bjelke), (2004) Litteratur og repræsenta-
tion (Literature and Representation), (2004), Kognition—en liberalistisk ideologi
(Cognition—A Liberalistic Ideology), (2007) Moderne litteraturteori 1–2 (Modern
Theory of Literature 1–2), (2009) Lacan, sprog og seksualitet (Lacan, Language and
Sexuality), (2010) Psykoanalyse—et videnskabsteoretisk perspektiv (Psychoanalysis—An
Epistemological Perspective), (2012) Angst hos Lacan og Kierkegaard og i kognitiv terapi
(Anxiety in Lacan and Kierkegaard and in Cognitive Therapy).
Per Roar, PhD, is an artist-researcher who combines choreography, social-political
concerns and research. In his doctoral project ‘Docudancing Griefscapes’ (2015) at
the University of the Arts Helsinki, he explored this contextually based approach
to choreography, while drawing on his mixed background from choreography
Contributors xv
(BA, Oslo National Academy of the Arts), dance history/-ethnology (NTNU,
Trondheim), performance studies (MA, New York University) and social sciences
and history (Cand. mag., University of Oslo, Corvinius University in Budapest, and
Oxford University).
Richard Rushton, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Lancaster University,
UK. He is the author of The Reality of Film: Theories of Filmic Reality (Manchester
University Press, 2011), Cinema after Deleuze (Continuum, 2012), and The Politics of
Hollywood Cinema: Popular Film and Contemporary Political Theory (Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2013).
Yaelle Sibony-Malpertu has worked for 15 years as a psychologist and a psycho-
analyst for the Sainte-Anne Hospital, Paris, France. She trained in philosophy at the
Sorbonne and has published the monograph, A Philosophical Relationship:Therapeutic
Links between Descartes and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (Stock Editions, 2012). She
is finishing a PhD on psychoanalysis and intergenerational transmission of trauma
at the Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society Research Center, (EAD, 3522), Denis
Diderot’s University, Paris.
Birthe Tranberg Nikolajsen has a BA in Social Pedagogics 1994, MA in Educa-
tion 2000 and two years full MA in Philosophy of Education, Aarhus University.
Presently her research is a philosophical investigation into how psychoanalysis can
function as an epistemic foundation for social pedagogics.
Myna Trustram, PhD, held curatorial and research posts in museums and galler-
ies for many years including the Manchester Art Gallery and the People’s History
Museum. She currently works as a research associate at Manchester School of Art
(Manchester Metropolitan University). Her work is about loss, melancholy and the
abundance to be found in museum collections and is influenced by trainings from
the Tavistock Institute, Tavistock Clinic and Group Analysis North. She writes aca-
demic prose but also works in other written forms that move around essay, memoir
and performance.
Ben Tyrer, PhD, teaches Film Studies at King’s College, London. He is the author
of the monograph, Out of the Past: Lacan and film noir (Palgrave M
acmillan, 2016), as
well as articles and chapters on psychoanalysis and cinema. He is co-coordinator of
the Psychoanalysis in Our Time research network.
Goran Vranešević is a research fellow at the Institute for Applied Research and
Development in Celje, Slovenia, Coordinator of the Seminar for Political The-
ory at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a member of the council
of Aufhebung-International Hegelian Association. He has written articles on
