Freud's 4pm Session: Abécédaire

Sharon Kivland will read from her book Abécédaire (MOIST, 2022), written for five days a week over a year, no longer than the length of a psychoanalytic hour. I followed Freud’s model of train travel for his theory of free association, acting ‘as though, for instance, [you were] a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which [you] see outside’. As for her characters, many of their names begin with A: ‘Anna, Anne, Ann, all those women who are not my sisters, who are my sisters’. She will read extracts in which a certain Anna F. goes dancing and ice-skating, renounces marriage, writes and dreams, walks her clever dog, nurses her dying father, sews and weaves. Weaving, as we know, may be a metaphor for psychoanalysis, and weaving, as also we know, may be done and undone. ‘Kivland must lose the thread of Anna Freud’s life. Her vignettes and readings invite other vignettes and readings, which in turn invite others’ (Louis Lüthi). This afternoon she will be in the company of Simon Wortham.

The event will be introduced by Dr Giuseppe Albano, Director of the Freud Museum.

SPEAKERS

Simon Wortham is the author of Modern Thought in Pain: Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) and Resistance and Psychoanalysis: Impossible Divisions (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and co-editor of the volume Desire in ashes: deconstruction, psychoanalysis, philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). He is also the author of a trilogy of short novels published by Ma Bibliothèque between 2020 and 2022, which address trauma, memory, writing, and art through exploring creative resistances to psychoanalytic texts and ideas. In this sense, Wortham's recent work connects strongly with those moments in Sharon Kivland's writing where questions are asked about the memory and language of psychoanalysis as a provocation to its future, notably in relation to critical and artistic practice.

Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer. Her work considers what is put at stake by art, politics, and psychoanalysis. She is currently working on the natural form, fables, and the furies. A set of a hundred and twenty drawings entitled The Bloody Radicals will be exhibited at ZAK, Zittadelle Spandau, Berlin, next September. Her novel Abécédaire was published by Moist Books in July 2022. Several new books are forthcoming in 2025: Almanach. A Year in the French Revolutionary Calendar (Grand Iota); Her Discourse (Joan Publishing); Envois: The Complete Correspondence. Love letters from Jacques Lacan to Sharon Kivland, 1973 to 1981 (Tenement Press). She is also an editor and publisher, under the imprint MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE.

A dazzling new exhibition that highlights the women who helped Freud invent psychoanalysis and their legacy in its practice – as well as in the arts and literature through to our own time.

30 October 2024 – 5 May 2024

Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists Exhibition Catalogue – edited by Lisa Appignanesi is available on our online shop here.

Complement your visit to the Freud Museum with one of our weekly tours or talks led by staff, volunteers and guest speakers.

The talks are free with your admission ticket. Book your admission ticket now!

The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum during regular opening hours. Unfortunately, the Freud Museum does not currently have step-free access. Advance booking is highly recommended, as capacity is limited.

Concessions/Members/Patrons: Please show proof of eligibility/membership card on arrival.

Host or Publisher Freud Museum London