Prometheus of our time – about the creative and the destructive in the modern man
The third panel discussion of the cycle„Sigmund Freud and Leonardo da Vinci: a Meeting of Psychoanalysis and Art“ organized by the Psychoanalytical Society of Serbia will be held on April 15, at 7 p.m. at the Belgrade City Library under the title:
Prometheus of Our Time – about the Creative and the Destructive in the Modern Man
According to one of the many versions of the ancient myth of Prometheus, he was brutally punished for giving fire to humans: he may not have assumed that fire would be used not just for the progress of the humankind but for mutual destruction as well.
In his/her everyday work, a psychoanalyst witnesses this modern Promethean fight of the creative and the destructive in an individual: this first-hand psychoanalytic experience is the subject of this presentation.
Nina Popadić will present an interplay of these forces in children. Psychoanalysis shows us that the battle between love and hate starts from the very beginning of life, that aggressiveness even at such an early age is not the result of (only) negative influences from the outside and that the question of “what to do with one’s own aggressiveness” is one of the key questions of growing up.
Vojislav Ćurčić will show how these conflicts operate in adolescence which is marked by a whimsical struggle between the awaken drives. It is also marked by the need of an adolescent to become his own person, to have and to show his identity. All this results in the need for creativity, one would say, at any price and in any shape – a constructive and/or a destructive one.
Marija Vezmar will present how creative and destructive impulses intertwine in a person with artistic and creative potentials. The creative process takes place on the way from the real world to the realm of fantasy, bringing along with it many points where block may happen, very often caused by breaking through of the violent elements in the act of creation.
Jean-Michel Basquiat,
a painter whose art developed from street graffiti
– Mona Lisa (1983), acrylic and oil paint
Moderator: Aleksandar Kontić, a psychoanalyst of the Psychoanalytical Society of Serbia
Lecturers: Vojislav Ćurčić, the PSS training analyst, Marija Vezmar, the PSS training analyst, Nina Popadić, the PSS psychoanalyst.
Lecture will be held in the Large Hall – Reading Room of the Arts Department of the Belgrade City Library, on Friday, April 15, 2016, at 7 p.m.
Admission is free.
