2008/11/14
OCA Semesterplan – WEEK 48
Wilhelm Reich's Cloud Buster
Håvard Nilsen: The Troll Circle and
Dr. Bjørn Blumenthal: On Wilhelm Reich
Followed by A Screening of
Sigmund Freud's Dora: A Case of Mistaken Identity, (1979)
dir. McCall, Pajaczkowaska, Tyndall and Weinstock
Wednesday, 26 November / 19:00
Nedre gate 7
Freud's controversial pupil, Wilhelm Reich, lived in Norway from 1934 to 1939, a period when he wrote The Sexual Revolution and launched psychoanalysis as an experimental laboratory science, as well as coined the concept of the 'orgone', or sexual energy. Norwegian historian and social scientist Håvard Nilsen revisits the first public debate related to the experiments around sexual energy conducted in Norway, in order to argue that the political aspects were far more important than the scientific issues at stake in the debate.
Dr. Bjørn Blumenthal, an Oslo based psychologist and a former student of Ola Raknes will make an additional presentation, analyzing the clinical importance of Wilhelm Reich's work and its significance to psycho-organic health in today's society.
Following both presentations, Sigmund Freud's Dora: A Case of Mistaken Identity, (1979) dir. Anthony McCall, Claire Pajaczkowaska, Andrew Tyndall and Jane Weinstock, will be screened.
About the film
Directed by Anthony McCall, Claire Pajaczkowaska, Andrew Tyndall and Jane Weinstock, Sigmund Freud's Dora: A Case of Mistaken Identity (1979, 16 mm, colour, sound, 35 min.) interrogates woman's status as the object of desire through a complex set of relationships between sound, text and image, and combining historical information from Dora's birth to the publication of her case study by Freud with a series of dialogues between analyst and patient.
About the speakers
Håvard Nilsen (b.1969) is a historian and social scientist educated at the Universities of Oslo, Strasbourg and Cambridge. He is affiliated with a project group writing the History of the University of Oslo for the bicentenary in 2011. Nilsen has published articles in Norwegian and international journals, as well as in several books. He is the director of the think tank Res Publica.
Dr. Bjørn Blumenthal is a psychologist specialized in clinical psychology. He graduated at University of Oslo in 1956 and trained under Elsa Lindenberg, Odd Havrevold and Ola Raknes. Blumenthal is the leader of the Norwegian Institute of Vegetotherapy and co-founder of the Scandinavian Institute of Psychotherapy in Gothenburg, former staff member of the European School of Function and Corporal Psychotherapy training in Naples, Italy, and one of the founders and former vice-president of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP).
Office for Contemporary Art Norway
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is a private foundation and was founded by The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in autumn 2001. The main aim of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway is to develop collaborations in contemporary art between Norway and the international art scene. The Office for Contemporary Art Norway aims to become a key contributor to the discourses of contemporary art.