engleski

Hysteric vs. Knowledge on Film

In his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud appealed to philosophy and biology hoping they would provide answers to his questions. His faith in natural sciences was steadfast, which is all the more suprising since only when Freud, the neurologist, had made way for Freud, the psychoanalyst, did psychoanalysis come to existence ; he abandoned medicine in favour of listening. Indeed, it was one of his hysteric patients, Anna O., that labelled the remedy for her infliction using parlance closer to arts than sciences – talking cure. Future of psychoanalysis is inseparabe from the future of humanities, as Foucault stated in his essay What is an author? (1969), alluding to Althusser and Lacan: “A study of Galileo’s works could alter our knowledge of the history, but not the science, of mechanics ; whereas a re-examination of the books by Freud or Marx can transforn our understanding of psychoanalysis or Marxism.“ From Lacan’s point of view, science and university are similar to paranoiac in that they are driven by a relentless pursuit of truth and knowledge with a strong belief the latter is attainable, it is “out there“, much like the Prefect of the police from Lacan’s Seminar Book II. I argue that in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, a film with a plot bearing resemblance to psychoanalytic treatment, Joe and Seligman embody hysteric and scientific stance towards knowledge respectively, i.e. that the film stages truth as intersubjective. Seligman tries to produce a schism in Joe between her past and present self, much like a psychoanalyst, and he compares Joe’s self-narrative with examples from arts and sciences. Joe is a hysteric who challenges his encyclopeadic knowledge, opposes his understanding of her past transgressions and exposes to ridicule his vain attempts at interpretation…

hysteric; transference; knowledge; Lars von Trier; psychoanalysis

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