In Freud's Oedipal narrative, powerful women are absent. Silhouetted against the awesome father, the mothers of Little Hans, Dora, the Rat Man and the Wolf Man are passive and disembodied. Colorless, they show no signs of desire. They command no authority. For Freud, mothers and women are impotent to effect their desires, sexual or otherwise. Even more significantly, mothers and women are never willing agents in any of Freud's writings. They have no capacity for self-leadership. "What does a woman want?", Freud asked. The sexuality of women is "a dark continent", he complained. In 1924, Otto Rank, one of Freud's closest colleagues, published The Trauma of Birth, overturning Freud's Oedipal narrative and introducing the "powerful mother" into psychoanalytic discourse. This talk, based on newly published letters between Freud and Rank, tells the story of how the gigantic conflict between these two men played out.
Robert Kramer, PhD, is a visiting professor of leadership at Corvinus University in Budapest. He teaches the intellectual history of psychoanalysis, leadership and action learning in the PhD program at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. He is editor of The Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures of Otto Rank (Princeton University Press, 1996) and co-editor, with E. James Lieberman, of The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). He is author of many articles on leadership development and action learning, and consults on these topics to men and women in organizations around the world, including the European Commission, the US Government, NGOs and multinational corporations.
Robert Deam Tobin holds the Henry J. Leir Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches courses on sexuality, human rights and literature. He is the author of Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe (2000) and Doctor's Orders: Goethe and Enlightenment Thought (2001), as well as the co-editor of A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (2007). In celebration of the centennial of Freud's 1909 lectures at Clark University he edited a special issue of Psychoanalysis and History called "Global Freud," which came out in 2011. In the summer semester of 2013, he is the Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Museum and the University of Vienna, where he is beginning a new project on sexuality and human rights and teaching a proseminar called "Freud, Sexologie und Menschenrechte."
Female Sexuality, Birth and Otto Rank: Freud's Greatest Trauma?
Vortrag von Robert Kramer (in englischer Sprache)
Dienstag, 18. Juni 2013, 19:00 Uhr
Sigmund Freud Museum / Lounge
Berggasse 19
1090 Wien
Moderation: Robert Deam Tobin (Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis 2013)
Robert Kramer, PhD, is a visiting professor of leadership at Corvinus University in Budapest. He teaches the intellectual history of psychoanalysis, leadership and action learning in the PhD program at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. He is editor of The Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures of Otto Rank (Princeton University Press, 1996) and co-editor, with E. James Lieberman, of The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). He is author of many articles on leadership development and action learning, and consults on these topics to men and women in organizations around the world, including the European Commission, the US Government, NGOs and multinational corporations.
Robert Deam Tobin holds the Henry J. Leir Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches courses on sexuality, human rights and literature. He is the author of Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe (2000) and Doctor's Orders: Goethe and Enlightenment Thought (2001), as well as the co-editor of A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (2007). In celebration of the centennial of Freud's 1909 lectures at Clark University he edited a special issue of Psychoanalysis and History called "Global Freud," which came out in 2011. In the summer semester of 2013, he is the Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Museum and the University of Vienna, where he is beginning a new project on sexuality and human rights and teaching a proseminar called "Freud, Sexologie und Menschenrechte."
Female Sexuality, Birth and Otto Rank: Freud's Greatest Trauma?
Vortrag von Robert Kramer (in englischer Sprache)
Dienstag, 18. Juni 2013, 19:00 Uhr
Sigmund Freud Museum / Lounge
Berggasse 19
1090 Wien
Moderation: Robert Deam Tobin (Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis 2013)
