The Blank Page: The Institute Of Psychoanalysis 2010 Screening Conditions Programme Launches With Exploration of Literature in Film 

The Institute of Psychoanalysis launches its 2010 Screening Conditions programme with The Blank Page, a psychoanalytic exploration of the craft and challenges of writing as portrayed in four exceptional films. The Blank Page series, held at the ICA in Lon

The first series within the Screening Conditions programme, a year-round programme of events at which classic films are shown and discussed from a psychoanalytic angle, The Blank Page includes films from a range of genres and eras. Psychoanalyst Andrea Sabbadini, who chairs the events, says, The focus is on the profession of writing, looking at the way filmmakers have observed writers. These four wonderful films portray writers who are experiencing different degrees of personal or professional crisis. Writers are particularly sensitive to their own and other people's lives, stories and problems, which will make them an interesting subject for discussion from a psychoanalytic perspective."

Andrea Sabbadini will be joined by guest speaker Cheryl Moskowitz, an author, poet and psychodynamic counsellor with a special interest in the therapeutic value of writing, and there will be an opportunity for the audience to take part in the discussions.
Films shown will include The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), a lavish feature starring Gregory Peck, based on Hemingway’s short story in which a dying man looks back on the failures of his writing career; Deconstructing Harry (1997), Woody Allen's dark comedy in which he plays a successful writer whose fiction has had a negative effect on his relationships; the Cohen brothers' Barton Fink (1991), a brooding story of a Hollywood scriptwriter suffering from writer's block; and Il Postino (1994), a touching tale of a man who learns about language and romance from an exiled poet.
Andrea Sabbadini says, "We can draw interesting parallels between the relationship of postman and poet in Il Postino with the psychoanalytic relationship. The postman visits the poet daily to get some insight, in this case into metaphors and rhymes, through which he develops as a person. Barton Fink portrays a man completely isolated and unable to relate to the world of Hollywood, becoming a victim of the circumstances around him.

The 2010 Screening Conditions programme continues in April with The Dimmer Perspective, which looks at films that portray people with mental disabilities, and from September 2010 Watching the Blind will examine the way filmmakers have tackled blindness in cinema. Guest speakers for Watching the Blind will include film scholar and author Professor Peter Evans and Michael Brearley, President of the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

LISTINGS INFORMATION


Sunday 17 January 2010
Screening and discussion of Henry King’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952): based on a Hemingway short story in which a dying man looks back on the failures of his writing career.

Sunday 31 January 2010
Screening and discussion of Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997): a dark comedy in which he plays a successful writer whose fiction has had a negative effect on his relationships.

Sunday 14 February 2010
Screening and discussion of Joel Cohen’s Barton Fink (1991): a brooding story of a Hollywood scriptwriter suffering from writer’s block

Sunday 14 March 2010
Screening and discussion of Michael Radford’s Il Postino (1994): a touching tale of a man who learns about language and romance from an exiled poet.

To book and for further information: The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 112A Shirland Road, London W9 2EQ. Tel: 020 7563 5017 email: ann.glynn@iopa.org.uk
www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/cinema.htm

Press Contact: Ginette Goulston-Lincoln, 07958 448002, ginette@goulston-lincoln.com or Caroline Graty, 07984 911913, carolinegraty@mac.com

ANDREA SABBADINI is a practising psychoanalyst and is Chairman of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival and of the Screening Conditions series of films at the ICA. He is a fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, current director of publications of the British Psychoanalytical Society, honorary senior lecturer at University College London and the Film Section editor of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He has published extensively in psychoanalytic journals and edited Time in Psychoanalysis (Feltrinelli, 1979), The Couch and the Silver Screen (Brunner-Routledge, 2003) and Projected Shadows (Routledge, 2007), and co-edited Even Paranoids Have Enemies (Routledge, 1998) and Psychoanalytic Visions of Cinema/ Cinematic Visions of Psychoanalysis (in Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2007).

CHERYL MOSKOWITZ is a writer and a psychodynamic counsellor. She teaches on the Creative Writing and Personal Development MA at Sussex University and in 1997 co-founded LAPIDUS (National Association for Literary Arts in Personal Development) She works as a writer in schools and a facilitator of creative writing projects in the community including work in prisons, with the homeless, elderly and in hospitals and hospices. Her poetry and short fiction is published in several anthologies and literary magazines and her autobiographical novel, Wyoming Trail is published by Granta. She has written about her methods in Self on the Page: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development (Jessica Kingsley 1998),The Therapeutic Potential of Creative Writing: Writing Myself (1999 Jessica Kingsley) and Writing Works I & II (2006, 2010 Jessica Kingsley).

The Institute of Psychoanalysis is the main UK professional organisation for psychoanalysts in the UK and a global centre of excellence in the provision of psychoanalytic training, education, publication and clinical practice. Established in 1919, its membership has included Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott. It is the home of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, founded in 1926, one of a number of clinics established by Freud in Europe still in operation today. It offers consultations and help finding an analyst, in selected cases at a low fee.
It administers these activities on behalf of the British Psychoanalytical Society and is a member institution of the British Psychoanalytic Council. The Institute is also a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, which safeguards standards in psychoanalysis and ensures a rigorous training process.

For more information visit www.psychoanalysis.org.uk
For clinical enquiries contact the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis on 020 7563 5002, clinic@iopa.org.uk

ABOUT PSYCHOANALYSIS: Psychoanalysis is based on the theory that the experiences of birth, early relationships with parents, sexuality, love, loss and death lay down patterns in the mind which provide unconscious templates, or models of relationships. Such unconscious versions of relationships are often at the root of the problems which lead people to seek help. Regular sessions with a psychoanalyst provide a setting within which these unconscious patterns can be brought into awareness and worked on with a view to change. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone is trapped by deep-seated unconscious, archaic relationships to others; through psychoanalysis we can become more free to live our lives creatively and fully. For more information visit: www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/frontpage.htm - whatis

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