JAMIE RUERS is Events Manager at the Freud Museum London, where she builds a public programme of events, conferences, and exhibitions that engage with psychoanalysis through a range of disciplines. Please watch 'Lost Highway', 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Inland Empire' before attending sessions as there may be spoilers! Cox Cameron finds in Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive a text replete with the mechanisms of the dream-work identified in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

Psychoanalytic theory will be shown to illuminate Lynch’s iconic dream-logic, which is disturbing and beguiling in equal measure. Following a decade of working with homeless people in Dublin, she trained as a psychoanalyst at St Vincent’s University Hospital, completed a PhD on narrative (im)possibilities in psychosis, and has been in private practice for the past thirty-three years. Defining a cultural moment with some notes from Freud and Lacan Carol Owens CHAPTER 3 Dream logic in Mulholland Drive Olga Cox Cameron CHAPTER 4 Lost angels in Los Angeles: Lynchian psychogenic fugues Mary Wild CHAPTER 5 "It's a strange world, isn't it? Placing the film alongside James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake as rare examples of artworks which succeed in reproducing dream logic and considering Freud’s 1900 dream theory in light the developments of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, this talk examines the film with reference to the question posed by Lacan in relation to Freud’s famous ‘Irma’ dream: given that the dream repeatedly comes up against something that provokes anxiety, what allows the dreamer to continue dreaming?The paper will trace how humour plays an important role in the recollection of trauma and what it means to be stuck in a joke-fantasy while trying to claim one’s place in the world. Hailed by some critics as the century’s best film so far, Lynch’s Mulholland Drive began life as a failed TV spin-off of his cult series, Twin Peaks. Rather than presuming to fill in what Lynch leaves open by positing some forbidden psychosexual reality lurking behind his trademark red curtains, this book instead maintains a fidelity to the mysteries of his wonderful and strange filmic worlds, finding in them productive spaces where thought and imagination can be set to work. In the first of the PROJECTIONS lectures, these titles will be considered as forming a 'trilogy of blurred identity', where the central character in each instalment experiences a psychogenic fugue following the trauma of unrequited love within marriage and/or Hollywood. I shall here focus in particular on the theme of voyeurism, which also implicates us as spectators, and on the symbolic significance of the cut-off ear, the film’s iconic and emblematic MacGuffin.

With contributions from Olga Cox Cameron, Tamara Dellutri, Allister Mactaggart, Stefan Marianski, Richard Martin, Todd McGowan, Carol Owens, Chris Rodley, Jamie Ruers, Andrea Sabbadini, and Mary Wild. And only through Lynch’s films can we see how relevant Freud’s theory remains for grasping the crazy predicament we live in. Why does he invite us into his own dreamscapes and then leave us to figure our own way out, with just a liberal scattering of clues to help? The brilliant contributors include directors, cinephiles, philosophers, art and cultural historians, as well as psychoanalysts. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.Lynch, who once told an interviewer, "I love dream logic," would surely agree with Sigmund Freud's famous claim that "before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms.

Lynch, who once told an interviewer ‘I love dream logic’ would surely agree with Sigmund Freud’s famous claim that ‘before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms’. In this special LiS event, Olga Cox Cameron will be presenting her contribution to a new collection of essays, Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain. There was such an appetite for discussion, sharing ideas, and finding reason in David Lynch’s cinematic oeuvre, which are known for their seemingly nonsensical narratives, non-linear storylines, absurd characters, and mystical spaces.She has published articles and essays on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art in The Art Newspaper, various Freud Museum publications, and artist monographs.