The Mind of the Artist

The Mind of the Artist is a two-day conference jointly sponsored by the Scientific Program Committee and The Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis, and takes place in the evening of October 26 and daytime on October 27, 2018.

On the 27th at 10 am Siri Hustvedt joins Mark Solms, PhD, in conversation with Sue Gosin, MFA, and Eliza Kentridge for “What’s Neuroscience Got To Do With It?”

Speaking from a theoretical perspective, Friday evening’s panelists will consider the relation between artistic creativity and psychoanalytic treatment, the significance (if any) of the high incidence of affective disorders among literary and visual artists, the paradigm of art as reparation of early object relations, and the like. The relevance of Freud’s notion of sublimation to more recent explanations of the intra- and inter-psychic valuations of imaginative expression and the relationship of imagination to the self, to mechanisms of defense and agency, will be explored. Saturday morning’s session will be devoted to a discussion with literary and visual artists on the notion of art as play, the neurobiological aims of that instinct in the making of meaning, the relation of id and ego function to unconscious fantasy and its expression in art, and how artistic expression bears upon our neuroscientific understanding of pleasure and reward. A plenary session by Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel will be offered in the afternoon to be followed by a wrap-up Q & A with all participants.

This event is sold out.