Anxiety & Neurosis, 2012 – 18


Photography

Gazing at this artist’s photography, from a psychoanalytic perspective, Wilhelm Reich comes to mind. And, notably, his view of sexual politics. His contentions about the political implications of the suppression of sexuality in, for example, patriarchal based monogamous marriage are brought to the fore by this fine art work, albeit paradoxical and seemingly tangential. He stressed the importance of women having control over their own bodies and independence, in economic and psychological perspectives (perhaps worth noting here the possible relationship between a politico-social stance even related to Freud’s oedipal myth or, indeed, his theoretical Electra myth). For Reich – a male analyst, female sexual receptivity came possibly to represent a meeting of the self and the world in what he referred to as a ‘universal love’ i.e. in women sexuality is evolutionary – such that mankind would at last re-join the ‘natural’ universe. This is also perhaps allied to Malinowski’s psychological anthropology. (c) Kevin Zdaniecki