Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis: Day 2

00:00:00 So I thought to uh start us off I might uh refer back to comments that were uh introduced by uh Peter yesterday on uh Binsvanger and Warberg that foreshadows some of what we'll discuss as well as Francois's uh comments uh uh in the latter part of the uh uh proceedings where he referenced uh the role of the unconscious in uh creation and uh uh recognition of the creative products. Uh

00:00:31 so if either of you would like to start and we'll take it from there. It seems to me one point that's been overlooked so far in the symposium is that the psychoanalytic method is very analogous to Warberg's method of close attention to detail. the hair in a Roman sarcophagus and the hair in

00:01:01 bacelli and that the small attention to detail is also of course a psychoanalytic method that uh it's a different kind of listening and any kind of uh social slips that uh we hear in conventional conversation we overlook them and uh don't make out anything, make anything out of them. But in uh psychoanalytic

00:01:31 work, you pay close attention to the most minor uh verbal and nonverbal. And the whole uh clinical teaching of Vilhelm Reich is to focus on the nonverbal, the body, the posture, the way the man comes into the room and the way he sits down or lays down, whether he straightens the cuffs and and the seam of his pants and and so on. It it communicates a great deal. And

00:02:03 psychoanalytically uh the the emphasis on the small detail is also what Warberg has in common and and it was mentioned once yesterday but I think it deserves a little more. uh the technique of Carlo Ginsburgg who looks at the single case history in depth and the minor uh things that took place in an inquisition

00:02:34 uh interrogation and so on that and uh what uh the man had to say at the Miller and so on. So, uh, I think that when the illustration was made, there was a reference yesterday to the position of Moses's foot. Uh now I would say in that great statue of Michelangelo in the church of

00:03:06 San Pedro in Vinkoli in Roma and the Corso Kabore. Uh the small detail that one should focus on and that Freud focused on was not the foot but the finger which pulled aside that torrent of a beard. It it looks like a waterfall coming down and masterpiece and uh designed for uh the Pope's Pope Julius's tomb. But

00:03:37 uh this indicates for Freud and I I think we can go with him on this a ambivalence about action. He theory he it's the second time Moses came down from the mountain and he was again enraged and thought of smashing the tablets and

00:04:10 thought I think is not a coincidence. It it's time specific. Um, from there I I would say that the uh fearful and the the big thing that I'm not really hearing is the uh demonic uh bestial uh bloodconsuming

00:04:42 uh that Barborg feared that came out in his psychosis, murders, uh, kidnapping, threat, and I think that there's been a decline. I I think Freud was right in civilization, its discontents, 1930. there's been a decline in civilized and

00:05:13 and that really should be put in quotation marks civilized behavior just as when he writes about civilized sexual morality and modern nervous illness uh he's mocking it and that uh civilization by 1930 was in danger and he says so this is explicit of Arabus is in danger of destroying itself there's that much aggression And one of the things that happened in

00:05:44 the psychosis is that the aggression wasn't contained. It wasn't uh bounded and and uh it's it's really um a comment on civilization. And if Freud had lived until 1945, we can only fantasy what he might have written about the state of civilization. But who are we to say he was wrong? I think there's been a decline. And I think uh we're on

00:06:15 American soil now. And you may know that the American national anthem, the stars bangled banner, was written by Francis Scott Keyi as he was in Baltimore Harbor in the war of 1812 to 14, which is the American part of the Napoleonic Wars. And he was not a prisoner. He was on a truce ship with a British admiral and a British general. and he had gone down on this truce ship to free a

00:06:46 certain Baltimore physician who which he got out of of British captivity and they were watching the bombardment of a fort Fort Mckenry and they w they the British admiral general said now you've been with us you've dined with us and uh we can't let you go back because you now know our plan for invading Baltimore that we're going bombard the fort and then make a landing and try to come in on the east

00:07:19 side and so on and so they held him captive during this night in which he watched the bombardment and that's those are the words of the stars Banglad banner but there's a level of civilization there between adversaries at war that uh you know they treated him well uh He had to be held for an extra day for this reason. And there's a level of civilization in the American

00:07:50 Revolutionary War when you read in the letters of Thomas Jefferson. He was governor of Virginia at the time and he invited British captive officers to dine in Montichello. And there's a nice exchange of correspondence where they thank him for his graciousness and he said, you know, we may have uh countries who were at war, but we can still be civilized to each other. Uh we've had a debasement really, it seems to me, of values, and I

00:08:22 think that the Warberg uh picture is very much a part of that. Okay. Okay. Well, uh I I'll jump in later. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Perhaps the question for me confronting psychoanalysis and history of art through the work of Verbog is the common point between these two fields of

00:08:54 investigation of research. I I think effectively that unconscious is a common point an intersection and we have to know how varborg inform Freud and how Freud informed Varborg about unconscious the dimension of creativity of unconscious the timeless dimension of unconscious the adimensionality of unconscious is really important in the

00:09:24 creative process. and also to interpret uh artistic works. But today in this morning I think the question very difficult question is the place of psychosis in the process of thinking of varborg I am a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist and it's difficult to speak about psychosis of varborg that I didn't know him I have no clinical interview

00:09:56 with him I've only his work freud said about trebe that it was possible to read the psychosis directly in the text of the president Shreber. We don't need to see the the patient but I think it's difficult because as a psychoanalyst we have always the risk to be the spe specialized in the prediction of the past. It is an important message to have the history of Varborg of

00:10:26 Varborg work to look at it from Nemosin for example, N Lebanon uh or the Atlas and and and so on and to use the creativity, the scientific creativity of Varborg to interpret this strange moment between 1918 and 1924 when He was first in Vienna for psychotic breakdown and after he was

00:10:57 in in bins clinic at kitling near Zurich. And uh we have access today to the the description of everyday life of Varborg in this clinic. And he was very ill, very uh difficult moment of his life. And how can we make a relationship between these data of the clinical state of of Varborg and his mental illness and

00:11:31 al to to make a relationship with his thinking in art investigation and I I think it it it is a clinical uh problem. It is an ethical problem. It is also a theoretical theoretical problem to to make this kind of causality this kind of relation but we can try to do it but for me it's necessary to be really prudent in the

00:12:01 the construction of something between a mental state and an intellectual production. It's very easy to make the relation afterwards and to use a retrospective projection. The illusion of a pro project pro retrospection and prospection is difficult. I have a point. It is important to think about unconscious for one part and about

00:12:32 psychosis for the other part. For me the the work of Varborg after uh the psychotic breakdown perhaps we can discuss about uh a real access to to to something new through the the psychotic breakdown of of of Varboke. Perhaps we we I can speak about applied psychosis to

00:13:04 investigation of art. uh applied psychosis it's we have to discuss about that right it's a hypothesis applied psychosis because we can say it's a delirium delirium Freud was speaking about the question of truth in delirium direct access to the other two important access to access to the meaning too much meaning yes like if

00:13:34 a scanner of analyzing of the world delirium and truth. It's one question, one level question. The other level is for me invention, psychotic invention and var created new ideas about art. It was an perhaps inventions but these inventions finally

00:14:06 revealed to where revealed to be discovery and for me to find how to associate delirion and truth invention why not psychotic invention and discovery is a very important field of investigation. There are some mathematicians. We can speak about Nash for example. We can speak about Newton. Why not? We we were people with

00:14:36 these strange borders, strange limit between invention and investigation. when an invention invention and discovery discovery when an invention become a discovery. It it was for me an important question about fabric. We're really getting at the heart of a I think a um a dialectical question that runs through much of psychoanalytic thinking about you know is there a di dialectical

00:15:08 relationship between psychosis and creativity uh disorder and order entropy and organization. Exactly. Exactly. We can say that that for artist it is perhaps well known or better known artist with psychotic problems have a creative or they they lose completely the creativity or they have a possible creativity. that here we are speaking about scientific creativity in a psychotic uh thinking

00:15:41 and I think it is a great question for us for for psychoanalyst for psychoanalyst but also for to think the relationship between these the process of creativity for historians too I and Um I think the what you you state it very well and there within psycho psychoanalytic history there's something of an anticipation of that say in in

00:16:12 Chris's regression in the service of the ego um and it's very interesting to think how close Chris was to the Warberg school um and how important it was to him and um and just to to to follow up on some of the uh the comments here um in the work that I've done in uh studying Warberg's ideas um and also Fred Zoxel's ideas in comparison to Freud and and to uh Chris uh what what

00:16:44 strikes me is not only a um an intersection in idea and theory but a kind of methodological intersection that um that Peter also was was referring to. Um, I was interested first to see how psychoanalysts interpreted culture. Then I was interested in seeing how the interpreters of culture were using psychology. And and and Warberg was absolutely uh crucial in this. And one um one idea I think that Warberg was um

00:17:16 advancing so to speak without putting it this way. He he talked about the afterlife of antiquity, but the return of the repressed and that this was a a a an idea, right, an attitude or an interest of those in psychology and culture in the early 20th century that could bridge what they were doing. um Warberg what interested me and then in in Warberg is not only the idea but

00:17:46 the methodology he was pursuing before his breakdown um and and what I found interesting was this that the the very close attention to detail when you read Warberg's essays um and and and and don't uh before sort of expanding upon the content of his ideas or theories but just the the methodological approach of his essays, how extraordinarily careful he is in in building an argument. I mean,

00:18:17 excessively careful. Um, and and it's very, I think, interesting to point out because as we're talking about him, we were talking about very large universalistic conceptions that stretch across time and borders that were very important to him and that psychology was key to establishing this. but in his own essays. Um, how interested he was in particularities and being able to cite the source of almost every single

00:18:48 proposition that he was making and and so he could argue, you know, give the it's it's God is in the detail, right, was one of his his phrases, right? He could also say the devil is in the detail, but his was the God is in the detail. also his idea that within the image the image is an accretion across time what what attaches to the image is as important as the final product that we see and that Warberg didn't follow

00:19:19 this as much as say Zoxel did. I mean Zoxel was very taken by the idea that you could trace these accretions and and sort them out in an even more detailed analysis. Um and of course Warberg thought that the image was in fact a kind of action. Um that that to do art yes was repeating an action the action that was was portrayed and that it was a step from ritual which was too close to to something that was was further from it more symbolic. Um

00:19:51 and he was very careful and and he used and he he saw the images he saw images not only as documents in the way we've been talking about it but he saw it was essential to apply documents to an understanding of the image. And so he when he was in Florence, he was not only looking he was only looking within the churches at the images, he was going into the archives, the family letters, the family correspondences, um and he was key to developing a method of studying art through the patrons,

00:20:22 through patronage, um through a study of pageantry and ritual at the time. All and to come back to my to to the point I began with before the breakdown he is so careful to establish this context that the context was almost a way was both an advance in methodology for interpreting the image but almost a way you can almost feel him trying to keep composed trying to keep these these um

00:20:54 ambivalent right conflicting um issues he's dealing with both within himself and culture to to find this balance and it it's fascinating to read his scholarly method as a way of sort of trying to keep himself together and and moving forward and then comes the stage right where invention and investigation suddenly merge perhaps I can say something about your argument because it's it seems to

00:21:25 me very important when it was in in Yenna and after in in Binser clinic at Kit Ling and he he has this problem that was very important for for Bins Vaner the flight of ideas and too much meaning everything in relation to everything and to to have too big access to to the meaning and I I I I ask me

00:21:57 about the process of healing of of of Varborg and we can say that the the the the question of the details uh is very important and he has something like if we can say a metronmic style of thinking thinking from the part to to arrive to the global meaning starting from the the part from the detail the the god is in the detail it's the idea

00:22:30 is like he was looking for a root of himself in the detail and he we have for one part flight of ideas and for the other part metimic style of thinking interval detail uh the the movement the foot of the ninfair florentina the foot of Gadiva for Freud, the the foot of moments of suspension, a

00:23:03 rupture in the flight of ideas. And I think the perhaps we can have the hypothesis that he cured himself using the the the interval the the the the suspension of the action because he was in in flow of action and all his intellectual work and intellectual creativity was here to stop this flight

00:23:35 of ideas. And perhaps it is linked to g together in the in the process of creativity process of scientific creativity of varok. Um within uh this frame of mind of trying to find parallels between art history and psychonalics. I would like to introduce a third term which I think is absolutely crucial and that's historioggraphy. uh I think that both complicates and expands the whole uh frame of what we're

00:24:07 discussing because it's precisely historioggraphy that is the analysis of the historical the art historical text in this case which is a form of analysis or even a psychoanalysis and what I find very very interesting in this case is that the artistorium himself in Chrysling becomes an object of analysis by psychoanalyst namely Binsvanger who not only analyzes is him but also his writings. We know that he had read before he heard the Croleian uh famous

00:24:39 lecture on the snake ritual that not heard he had read carefully uh his works. He mentions Luther in his correspondence which was just published in 1920 one year before he arrived in a later letter later letter letter he mentions the Ceceri essay of 1907. uh and from certain comments we definitely understand that he had read a dissertation on bichelli. I'd like to bring one example which is he bins vaner's comment after varbuk gave his lecture on the images on of the pueblo

00:25:11 uh in 1923 and his comment was rather dismissive uh he was very critical uh that the lecture was almost chaotic in its structure uh and uh of course that barbuk was contain and it was met with success but he had a lot of criticisms and in fact he mentioned something that I find very symptomatic. He says that what he does is he covers everything with so much uh accessory element and he calls that bivvac. He uses the term and the main

00:25:43 events are left as philological illusions that very few people in the audience can understand. I think that's the most ingenious diagnosis that Vince Vanir ever had of our book beyond his mental condition but of his own work. even if he's critical and negative because that's precisely the core of our book's logic that is to bring the accessory or the detail as as we said that is so much uh used in psychonalytic interpretation to the very center of

00:26:15 interpretation but of course he's right to say that things are covered by accessories but you know then we can start asking ourselves what's precisely the function of these accessory elements both in Barb's historioggraphy But also in Freud's analysis for example that to me uh if I can make a parallel function similar to the role of screen memories images that appear again and again and cover the main facts and yet the only

00:26:46 access to we have to the main facts are these screen memories and we have to go and move through them and usually there are certain details. the image of the little botanical specimen flower which is connected to all these different things and you know to the flower bouquet that Freud went to give you his drive to the little uh book that he had seen in a in a bookstore and finally to opium and cocaine which is the main effect but we would never have gone there without the image of the little

00:27:16 flower right so I'm thinking what if we think of images in these terms in art history right and see what appears as an accessory element that covers things can also reveal them. Oh no, it's it's an excellent discussion because it's also a discussion about a lesson of clinic to to treat uh a psychotic uh breakdown. It's not only to to to to put it away but to to use the solutions of

00:27:51 the subject. Mhm. And here with detail, historioggraphy, context, all these kind of things we can postulate that bins used that to treat uh Vborg not treatment, putting away the symptoms, but treatment using the the solution uh that open the the the the symptoms of the patient. Mhm. And

00:28:21 perhaps it was an important contribution. I know for example that Vince Wanker proposed to to that Prince Horn will come to to to his clinic to meet uh Vborg and to discuss with him about creation and art and so on. Big thing is that he gave Prince Horn's book on publication in 1922. He gave it to Vinceb to Barborg.

00:28:54 This is what today you'd call a relational method of treatment. He also had Vborg to tea and to dinner with the family which is the method he acquired from his teacher Boiler Oen Boiler. He used to bring patients in the Berg Holley including Sabina Spiel and you find letters from Biler to Mrs. Spiel Ry and Rosto on Madan about her behavior is much better today and uh we had her to

00:29:25 tea and so forth. And I think the uh very humanistic treatment the reward would be you get to go for a walk with binser and his son when uh the uh they've been uh stubborn wouldn't eat his breakfast at uh binser laid down the rule. you have to eat your breakfast by 10:00 and uh then you can go for a walk with me

00:29:57 and so on. Now I question this idea of really psychosis and creativity. I don't think it's that simple. I think that u Lawrence Kubie had a correct intuition when he went back past the structural model to the topographic model and he said there's something that happens between the unconscious which admits it ideas to the preconscious and then you

00:30:29 can work with them from the preconscious. He he goes back to the early model and that's his model of creativity and I think when you read uh Kafka for example he says an artist cannot be alone enough meaning has to go inside deeply and bring it up and work with it. Now Varborg was not particularly creative after release from the uh Citling and he uh gave a couple of

00:31:00 addresses, talks to opening congresses and so on. But there's another kind of creativity I think that uh psychoanalysis frees sexuality and Barborg was able to enjoy a relationship with his assistant Gertrude and they went to Rome several times long trips to Italy. There's a downside to that that he necessarily well not

00:31:31 necessarily strike that that he didn't remain attentive to his family. When uh his wife writes, "What shall we give the children for holiday?" He's dismissive. Buy them whatever they want. But uh we have you know ample record that uh there he was in Roma and in Italy having a a very good time and uh I

00:32:02 suggest there's a new release of a sexual freedom that came out of his treatment and the harsh uh underside of European culture. You remember that charming anecdote that uh in 1929 when the pope signed the concordat with Mussolini and it meant that uh Catholic instruction would be given in schools and the cross in all the classrooms in the secular kingdom of Italy which since

00:32:35 1871 had been secular. Uh there was great activity on the streets of Roma and they told him don't go out. It's dangerous for foreigners. You don't know what's going to happen. He stayed out all day and half the night and came back and he said you know I've been studying the primitive underside of European culture for 40 years and now you deny me the chance to see the rebirth of the primitive here in Rome. And it was

00:33:07 uh I think what he's looking for in culture, the the primitive underside. And Freud also incidentally found this in himself during World War I. Terrible. Uh there was um mentioned yesterday, I think it was Diddy Huberman, uh that you could send a letter from belligerent Italy uh to Austria and vice versa. Uh I don't know

00:33:38 what his data is, but Freud's correspondence with Binsvanger details how after the war, his son is still in activity, captivity, uh in the Abbrutzi. He's wounded. He's in a hospital. He's lost his pack. And Freud cannot communicate with him. All they had was a postcard from the Red Cross. And so Freud writes to bins. It's a long correspondence about this. Uh you

00:34:11 are in neutral Switzerland. You can get money to him. Uh please help him. And in fact, Bener did that. sent 500 Swiss Franks to Martin and we have Martin's memoirs where he said due to my father's excellent international connections I was able to buy drinks for all the other prisoners and so uh now that's the ego functioning of a very good uh father but

00:34:42 in himself Freud discovers you remember the dream which he fortunately for For us, the interpretation of dreams is something that he revised and added to. It's in the chapter on wish fulfillment in dreams. He has a dream of 1919. Take a look at it. Uh the text uh well the manifest let me just tell you about the the manifest content is uh that he gets a check and

00:35:17 says to his wife this is dream content. What is this 5,000 croner? Do you know anything about it? And she said no. and said, "Well, we received this an association." That's what a unit sends to the family of killed soldiers officer. And so then later in the dream, he sees a bandaged man reach for something up in a

00:35:48 cupboard and he says, "Can I help you?" And the man doesn't answer. That's the manifest content. And the latent content that he then associates to is who doesn't answer. The dead don't answer. And dreams about the death of his son. I think this relation between manifest and latent content, you can see it in Varus historioggraphy itself that is and especially towards his sources. I wanted to mention Freud for example. He does

00:36:19 not appear in any of the published sources but so do not appear are the people like Darvin or Vignoli that were important to him. So it's precisely his notes uh the things that are today kept in the tetle caston that give us a much more complete idea of what he had read uh and they give us the background beyond what is been published and also uh to your remark that well he didn't do much after he came back he did a lot uh but um no publication you're right

00:36:52 nothing was published uh but he gave lectures he gave courses he organized exhibitions and also The work of Arbuk throughout his life even before the collapse was precisely that of making research and the research would not always lead to a publication. There are hundreds of unfinished lectures. Yes, just for the sake of research that are there and somebody else perhaps later will come and finish them and publish them. Yeah. And building library as well. I also wanted to mention in terms

00:37:22 of its relationship to Freud that's also a big mystery because there are very few notes on Freud in the title guest and I looked at two or three one of the town he had read it apparently and the psycho pathology of everyday life and then there's this mysterious note on the margin of uh the the manuscript for the his memoirs for the Christan lecture that I miss Freud's totemament taboo and one good think okay we know he didn't have his books with him at the time

00:37:54 couldn't he ask bisvanger you know bisvanger had all of Freud's work at that time so I really want to ask what the phrase I miss Freud taught him in taboo and which chapter the third chapter on animism or the second chapter on prohibition or the killing of the father on the fourth all of these issues that as I say Freud is somewhat a latent continent in our book that's why we were all so happy when did Burman's book came out and uh made these connections

00:38:26 manifest at that time and I think the relation to economics is important there but that's I would say the latent connection to all sorts of different authors and writings is is an element of our book and also how he converts everything I would not call Varbuk either like a Freudian or a der Dvinian or anything anything that he takes from other authors. He totally metabolizes it. There's a huge distance between him

00:38:56 which is I think a thinking distance. Um an analogy which has to be limited. Um, in encountering uh, Warberg as a scholar and the methods he used, I thought of a completely different type of historian with a completely different vision and it was EP Thompson only because once EP

00:39:27 Thompson was asked, "How would you define your method as a historian?" and his answer was anything that works. And and I think that sums up EP Thompson brilliantly. Um that was his um mindset. and you read through Warberg's pre 1923 writings and even the the Hopi lecture um he was willing to try anything that worked and and I think

00:39:58 that that's it's it's very I think significant to keep in mind when thinking about why discuss in connection with psychoanalysis with neuroscience um I keep going back to the method um and the the his theories um I find you know they they can be inspirational but for but for people who are pursuing work from different disciplines I I think it's the methodological spirit the methodological activity that that seems so crucial um

00:40:31 when he says you know God is within the detail when Freud talks about the importance of of detail I also think for example of um a neuroscientist right Eric Kendell who in in search of memory described that you know his methodology was one cell at a time one cell at a time and that's not so far removed um from from from Warberg um and that and that early 20th century

00:41:01 approach you know what one detail at a time now what Warberg found in this sort of detail of the nymph right um I just add to to follow up on on on where there could intersection and instinct theory. Um Warberg also found death in the nymph. Um not just the sort of return of the repressed but but death. And I think it's possible to compare for example what he was doing in interpreting you know Buchelli with what Freud was doing

00:41:31 in the theme of the three caskets and interpreting the fates and interpreting especially Cordelia in the end that this too I mean you know Shakespeare was Renaissance in that sense and Cordelia you know is in a sense um Freud's nymph as Gdiva was and Cordelia is death um and and represented very much very similarly in the sort of mental image which is another issue that I thought would be interesting you know Warberg's

00:42:02 I you know that that the image that we see is also accompanied by mental image that has to be understood but the um those links as well but but methodologically um I think yes if one wants to build upon Warberg I think one turns to the methodology um but um That's speaking from someone who come who comes at it as a historian and neither an art historian nor psychologist. I wonder if you'd agree that the Croitslingan lecture the method

00:42:34 is prees Feron broadell and the method we call anal today uh the environment the climate that's very yes there's elements of that yeah the first time that use the term unfelt right which 19 time oh I I think it's important field of research in this conference is a research conference a research seminar we have to work about it because it's not for me important to

00:43:07 know if Freud was before or variable knows Freud and so on but we have the same questions at at at stake in the same moment and in different fields of research it's very something very impressive for historical point of view. Why you have simultaneously fried uh for why why not the so for the question of the meaning

00:43:39 in in Geneva you have Shernburgg changing completely the music you have sees in painting you have a simultaneous change in different fields and for me it's very surprising very very strange you even if they don't know them them between and I don't know for historical point of view what is this kind of simultaneity

00:44:10 roland bart had the idea of uncontra between different intellectual living at the same time discussing what will be the discussion between we have to create the discussion between Freud and varborg about detail if you create a fiction They they come together. It's not me and you. It's Freud and Binsvanger and Varborg discussing about the

00:44:42 function of memic thinking in the analysis of detail in clinic and history of art. We have we we are in this kind of of situation. I think the other question that was presented about totem and taboo I miss my totem and taboo is fascinating in my association would be to murder it's the murder of sons and then the murder of the father and this is something he was very obsessed with

00:45:12 saturn and you know I mean that the outbreak of the psychosis was getting a pistol in Hamorg 1921 18 But it's not a country that had the second amendment and weapons all over the place and boy so you know it's and he was afraid of murders of his family of himself and so on to it's a wonderful the other question about your president

00:45:44 discussion is the fact that for me I had the impression like you said that varborg after uh the breakdown after the clinic of Binser between 1920 24 and the death in 1929 had a very important creative work afterlife. Exactly. Reanimated. Yeah. Re Yes. I have the impression of that it is a second library and that the library

00:46:16 the neosign all this research we discussed yesterday was very central after this experience of psychosis but what you see is a kind of condensation of the things he goes back to the earlier themes even the body and others and condenses and I don't want to say systematizes somehow he puts together in the neimosin atlas etc all of these themes that come back with oid By Chinese and others and some new ones such as northern uh Renaissance,

00:46:47 northern Renaissance and Baroque art that he never had touched before. Right. So you can revisit his own work through a new with a new point of view. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to mention one other detail in the cigan lecture. There's one word that comes up and it's the only pathological one and it's the term skoid. uh in the very second page right of the published text when he says that uh to us and that's a critique I don't know

00:47:17 whom he means us the westerners his audience etc uh this um dual practice between fantastic magic and sober prepressiveness seems to be the symptom of a cleavage but to the Indian this is not skitsoid and he uses the term skitsoid but the sign of an endless communicability within environment right so this is one time and I don't know to whom he refers that you know the Indians himself

00:47:47 uh you know it's one of these really dramatic moments that uh uh his own state and the state of an entire culture that is considered schizoid and that's his accusation this is not sktoid there and that also sounds less var uh and more I would say bins vanger of phenomenological era, right? The endless communicability with the environment that's not Freudian, right? Freud would consider the finely his the hostile environment

00:48:20 that we have to protect ourselves from. Uh it's a very interesting remark and perhaps we can you can say something about that through your work about var because I was surprised that in the beginning and it is also present in the letter of binser to Freud in November 1921 for binser varb was a schizophrenic patient in the school of Zurich burgulsi he he looked him as a precent

00:48:52 delirium and something like a schizophrenia and after the consultation of creepin in 1923 I think creeping said it's not schizophrenic it is an [Music] endless flight of ideas a mania he he said it is an mixed mania codepressive states with a very good pronostic. And

00:49:25 after this diagnosis of uh uh Kreplin, the the vision of Bins, Robert Varborg changed completely and the evolution of uh like if it was a change of paradigm, suddenly a change of paradigm for Vince Vaner, for the clinic, but also for Vborg himself. And it is why it is very good that they prepared this book about the different documents with the idea

00:49:57 idea of endless healing. It's it's a flight of ideas. The flight of ideas become an endless healing. But I think there's a consensus I'm hearing a consensus that was a successful treatment that there's a reconstitution and uh whether you know this is a new burst of creativity I don't think so building the library and obsessively building the library was a

00:50:28 major feat in Hamburg and and the details of the architecture and that they had uh tubes to send things from top to bottom and so on. A lovely bill which do you know the um Bibliotea John Jakamo Felt Trinelli in Milan the the dome with the lights coming through uh that's what it reminded me of the the photographs that we've seen the

00:51:00 um what you point to is something to focus on about his post courtsan life. Um, it's interesting also to think about in light of the library because Warberg in the library was to create a kind of a kind of community so to speak for himself that he could not create for himself in the outside world and maybe began to you know um very very late and too late in the in the 20s. But when you think about how he thought of that library and the phrase he used to describe his principle of organization,

00:51:31 the good companion um I mean when you think about Warberg's scholarship um and then that term put books next to good companions that's a very different attitude now. Um, and it's not unscolarly, but it's an idea of what he's doing through his scholarship that is sort of a search for kind of community that by putting these books together, by putting these books together, he can be he's in some way

00:52:02 putting the people together and that he's communicating with them and it should be good companions and and that makes it natural, not artificial. Um and and to use the word natural to describe what Warberg does is very difficult at that time because it is so you know because his his his search for composure is so complete. Um but there in the library right this this community that he creates for himself. Um one has to

00:52:33 try to imagine you know what it you can't you can imagine what it might have felt like but I think any scholar would would be able to appreciate that. That's something that doesn't distance us from from Warberg. Um and I'm and and one more point um having to do with how one finds again in the method um an access to or at least a a way of thinking about um his sort of relationship to to the world and to to himself. When Warberg goes in search of the documents, you

00:53:03 know, when he goes in search of family documents and business documents, I mean, he reads the accounts, you know, he's reading the the the the the bank, the business accounts and the family memoirs. Now, I'm trying to picture Warberg handling the documents that were written by or being in proximity the documents of the people that created them. And when he spoke about the artist sort of reviving antiquity, for him he

00:53:34 thought that the artist was putting himself in some kind of danger, so to speak, that there could be some kind of spark, right, that would set something off that that there was some ego issue that that could resolve. Well, now Warberg is is with these documents, and I just try to picture myself, all right, I mean, now again, methodologically, right, he's putting himself into proximity with these documents. um what is going on when he does that? I have no idea. But but he was very very

00:54:04 intent right on being with the documents and and I think that was something that was even very different from other art historians at the time who who emphasized the same kind of procedure. Was there are you almost implying that there was a selfhealing strategy in uh in this behavior perhaps? I mean I think that it was a self-healing strategy but I think also that bins used the selfhealing strategy of uh Varborg this is very important perhaps the documents

00:54:38 the the metmic interest for details the the metmic style of thinking the the the the question of movement of inhibition of movement As we discussed yesterday is very important for Varborg himself to stop something which is in the too much exitation too much psychometric psycho motor exit exitation

00:55:12 excess of of the living excess of meaning excess of of of senals of the body perhaps And for him perhaps the document was like a rupture. But I think it also was a risk he was willing to undergo in some sense. In other words, a risk he had to take. I I've again speculation. In other words, the two aren't it's not they're not opposed interpretations, but to undergo

00:55:43 healing, you have to take a risk. Oh, yes. and and and there was always an you know just as in the the image as healing for the artist entails a risk. Yes. Okay. And the risk that the artist took he's taking with the documents. It's a I'm completely wrong reflection about treatment of psychosis because to use the solution of the subject the invention invention of the subject as it is for one part risk and

00:56:13 for one part an issue and we have this difficult way and I think it was really important in the strategy of bins Swang I I think in that question of dealing with documents I think he treats both documents papers uh either historical documents or even books uh contemporary books and his encounter with people in the same way as encounters for example the first time he reads Darvin he puts it in his diary 30

00:56:45 years later he's going in the in the front cover of the book and write that I read this in 1889 and when I first read it I thought that's finally a book that helps me. So it's a it's an encounter that he goes back to again and again as as if the book was a real person. Ziggur Vel uh recently uh wrote an article about Varbuk's reading of Darvin and the next day he was reading that for two days in uh Florence in the library. The uh next day he meets his wife for the

00:57:17 first time and he leaves Darvin because his notes finishes and he plays the sister with Mary and so what does this mean? The most important book that I have read so far and then the next day I meet the most important person in my life. I think psychoanalysts could uh you know this sort of coincidence that happens at that time and you know it's a periodic one. I even think and somebody said it yesterday, you know, he had to visit the PBLO as if it was a document

00:57:48 in a way and he reads them as documents and in fact uh it's sometimes when we look at the notes we don't know some of his sketches of pottery for example did he see that live or did he see it from a book because he also goes to the Smithsonian and other sources to look at books and so it's a scholarly research and people live people uh real people and historical sources somehow come together in literary sources there and even and that's would be the most extreme argument that could make is that

00:58:20 his visit to Christan in Belleview somehow ultimately acts as this encounter with the very things that he was researching his entire life that is madness irrationality etc I'm not saying that he pursued that visit but in the end that's that's how it uh it functioned in his work almost an implication in what you're saying in terms of his encounter with with books and objects that almost a retention of the um the ability to animate the inanimate that is a quality

00:58:53 that uh people like Greenacre uh attributed to uh highly creative people that what is so uh immediately available to us in early childhood to sort of take the inanimate and in some way make it animated or to anthropomorphize you know all living things. I would say even the relationship between the books that you mentioned it's fairly if not animistic totemistic that is you have all the books on the snake right next to the books on the eagle and right next to

00:59:23 another bird etc etc. So there are this toemic affinities and analogies between the books which sometime you can rearrange in new analogies creating a new world by continuity and not continuity introducing a discontinuity because what is surprising with Varborg in the library of Varborg in my impression is that it's not a psychotic confusion.

00:59:54 Mhm. It is his introduction introduction tensions, rupture, contradiction, uh details uh in the process of the organization of the library also in the iconology. If if the image was a stop uh an open question, an enigma and not a source of confusion. And perhaps in the process of healing it was a decisive moment when it was not in the flight of

01:00:27 ideas and confusion and he opposed something which is suspension, fracture, tension, rupture, contradiction and it's the way it's it was his way of breaking what he thought were artificial even unproductive boundaries between disciplines. I mean the the catalog of the good companion meant as a methodological result is that books from entirely different disciplines were

01:00:57 going to be found next to each other. Yes. and and and to my mind again in in a conference like this um that that was Warberg's sort of truly kind of precient step that that this is an alternative organization and must be con and we must begin to conceive of this interdisciplinarity um at a time when he probably felt very constrained by that. um there was no

01:01:27 clear method forward although in a few years Freud would found Iago you know psychoanalysis applied to all of the geis visa and all the humanities and social sciences but Warberg himself in that library was was his way of trying to create a framework for doing what so many people now across disciplines conceive of as you know necessary. Yes. But the question remains why these kind of solutions of invention were finally

01:01:59 discovery. For me it's very mysterious from invention to discovery. But I think one of the things that you want to pick up about the treatment I mean I I think it was successful and I think it's significant of France what you point out that binser was quite pessimistic. He said in fact it's hopeless in 1921 and that there's a move. Now Freud and Boiler told us and and

01:02:34 there's a psychonamic truth in it that behind every psychosis there's a kernel of truth. Something happened something uh that we can get at if you listen properly get into the phenomenological world of the patient. right now. One of the things in his delusions was murderers

01:03:05 recounted briefly uh that he was very concerned. He had a big carti of all the Jewish persecutions and the blood ritual murder in the Barber archives. It's it's there. And one of his charges against binser was he wants to murder the Jews. Comes up several times. And I think this uh psychosis of murder

01:03:37 and in the um delusions in Croitzlingan he says this male orderly is the one who poisons me every morning. this and this uh idea that his family is in another pavilion in Citzling and and being tortured and held captive and uh even on these walks with bins of honor

01:04:08 he would walk up to the other pavilion and knock on the door and ask for his wife Mary and so uh so you've got a reemergence in life of some of these uh early fantasies and they get I think uh it was a phenomenological treatment of a person that was successful and you can see binser working with him as a strikes me when I

01:04:41 read the clinical history put together wonderfully by David Estimi who should be here in fact and he has published that history in Italian French and in German um is the extreme ambivalence indeed towards the and towards the treatment right sometimes he's devil sometime it's the healer as clipius which is inevitable right in every in every type of treatment uh there uh and then there's a very amicable correspondence after the he returns to to Hamburg at that point

01:05:13 um so uh and I think that all of these fears somehow don't get resolved but somehow the the object object that embodies the ambivalence is basically the snake in the in the lecture, right? The snake is both a healer and the awful snake that belongs to the fire. The engine changes film yesterday. There are some wonderful snakes, but they're not rattlesnakes from but what was wonderful in the film is that was an

01:05:43 image of the actual capella in Christling that has precisely the presentation of the path and serpent and we know that he in fact visited the chapel and he saw that but it's interesting how this little object again I don't want to call it a detail but this small can become the cause of all evil or good etc but everything can be condensed to it and somehow present some kind of resolution through that through that lecture which is not on exactly snake ritual. The

01:06:15 editors called this flag and ritual. Uh but it's just an images. Yes. The writing of memories by was a solution for Sbear. The conference about snake ritual was a solution for varog but we are at the end of the round table I think but perhaps we can it will be an possibility to do another round table about transference because if we are talking about clinic it's also the difficult question of transference in

01:06:47 psychotic patient and here it is a transference with binser and the clinic but also transference of binser with Freud and the question of the correspondence and it's a lot of people included like like in the culture we we we find the same inclusion of of the thing in another semantic field. It's a wonderful way to uh end the round table to pose questions for the future and you know we're going to have the the question period in the afternoon. We're

01:07:17 going to take a 15minute break and then the memory round table is going to convene. So thank you all for for being [Applause]