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Of Butterflies and other Symbols of Transformation

I have a butterfly in a bottle on my desk. It is not a real butterfly, it is fake. There is a wire attached to it and it is battery operated. When you tap the top of the bottle, the butterfly flutters and flies and flaps its wings. It is absolutely convincingly real. I LOVE it! I am fascinated by it and it is a symbol for me. Perhaps it is the ingenuity of the design, or the fact that it...

The Fantasy of Shirley Valentine

A friend of mine recently went overseas for 10 days to visit some family. Soon after she returned, she confessed that she felt overwhelmed at home. She wanted to go back to Europe and leave her children with her husband. What it was that made her feel this way? I also feel sometimes like running away. Small kids, teenager and husband can take its toll. Especially around 5 pm (suicide hour) when everyone wants something from you and it is not all...

‘The Horror Comes from within Man’: David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method

Helena Bassil-Morozow PhD, is a cultural studies theorist and film scholar. This post is a copy of her talk given at the Confederation for Analytical Psychology Conference - A Dangerous Method which was presented on Saturday 11th February 2012. It does not come as a surprise that the body horror director David Cronenberg chose psychoanalysis as the subject of his latest work. Psychoanalysis must appeal to Cronenberg because it allows him to go back to the roots of violence, sexual...