Sigmund Freud produced only one major case history of a female patient, Dora, a teenage sexual assault victim. In her 2020 film short, Hysterical Girl, director Kate Novack uses a compelling lens to imagine Dora as a female patient today. It is this depiction that filmmaker/documentarian Renee Silverman presents in this examination and discussion, at a time when we are witnessing a long wave of sexual harassment, gender-based violence and sex trafficking.
Woven throughout the film is archival material – a cacophony of paintings, photographs, film clips, news reels and advertisements that underscore the depth and breadth of a society that conspires to silence and shame survivors of sexual abuse. By reframing the narrative, the film serves as a powerful indictment of not just this aspect of Freudian theory but of civilization itself. What emerges is a visceral portrait of the ways in which Freud’s theory of hysteria survives within our culture, more than a hundred years later, still silencing and shaming survivors of sexual abuse regardless of age or gender.
After screening the short film with the group, filmmaker Renee Silverman and Dr. Ernesto Mujica will facilitate a discussion about the formalistic elements of the film and the visual representation of the social and oppressive factors that surround sexual violence today.
The group is also invited to attend the Sexual Abuse Study Group meeting for a second discussion of the film and the case of Dora, which will be held online on Thursday, September 18th, 1:30-3pm EST.
To view the film Hysterical Girl in advance, go to:
Renee Silverman, Filmmaker/Documentarian, is an award-winning American producer for German public television. Her recent credits includeWim Wenders: Desperado, winner of the 2020 Rose d’Or at Cannes, and It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story. She was archival producer on the Oscar nominated documentary RBG, as well as HBO’s United Skates. With Peter Miller, she directed and produced the award-winning docs Sosua: Make A Better World and Refugee Kids. She is currently in production with Peter Miller on a new documentary, Halloween Parade: A Tale of Two Villages, with executive producer, Sebastian Zimmermann (aka Seymour Licht).
ABOUT THE DISCUSSANT
Ernesto Mujica, PhD, is Director of the Sexual Abuse Study Group and Service at WAWI, where he also serves as an Associate Editor of its journal, Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Dr. Mujica is also Supervisor of psychotherapy there and at the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology of Teachers College, Columbia University. He integrates his clinical work in the areas of childhood and adult trauma, as well as sociocultural factors in mental health with his strong interest in the Arts. His previous talks within the WAWI Artists Study Group have included discussions of artists El Anatsui (Ghana & Nigeria), Kent Monkman (First Nations-Cree, Canada), Yayoi Kusama (Japan) and the Museo del Prado’s exhibit titled “Reversos.”