in the movie on construction—of image, identity, of power—which is deeply unsettling… LT: It’s very disturbing to recognize how constructed things are and to find yourself in a set-up you never made. In Committed, Frances Farmer is shown as trapped in different narratives or languages— family, love, law, psychiatry, femininity. That’s why I was attracted to her life. She was a tragic, famous figure, her plight was dramatic but not really unusual. How do you get to all that, as a writer or film-maker, and make it extreme, let’s say, visible and visceral, which we wanted to do? One way is to upset the delivery system, the codes. PN: In the same interview you observe that ‘A very important effect of feminism on psychoanalysis has been in talking about the institution as being descriptive rather than prescriptive.’ You go on to say that the discovery that ‘through speaking you can undo things, has made a big difference’. That seems to tie together your various interests in psychoanalysis, film and language, and to set up the narrative and stylistic techniques we’ve talked about as a means of ‘undoing’ things. Could you comment on that ten years on, in the light of what you have written since that interview? LT: I’m less certain now about what can be undone, though I still believe in talking and writing, making things or unmaking them if possible. Seeing ideas as descriptive not as prescriptive is still important to me. That’s why I’m against censorship and interested in offensive jokes. I’m using them in the novel I’m working on now, No Lease on Life. I’m questioning notions of outer and inner, public/ private, how each of us—how I—exist in a framework in which we are affected, bombarded, by the world, and still manage to think, feel, have our own worlds. Writing becomes more important to me even if it sometimes feels more futile. (laughs) More feudal. University of Sussex

DOI link for in the movie on construction—of image, identity, of power—which is deeply unsettling… LT: It’s very disturbing to recognize how constructed things are and to find yourself in a set-up you never made. In Committed, Frances Farmer is shown as trapped in different narratives or languages— family, love, law, psychiatry, femininity. That’s why I was attracted to her life. She was a tragic, famous figure, her plight was dramatic but not really unusual. How do you get to all that, as a writer or film-maker, and make it extreme, let’s say, visible and visceral, which we wanted to do? One way is to upset the delivery system, the codes. PN: In the same interview you observe that ‘A very important effect of feminism on psychoanalysis has been in talking about the institution as being descriptive rather than prescriptive.’ You go on to say that the discovery that ‘through speaking you can undo things, has made a big difference’. That seems to tie together your various interests in psychoanalysis, film and language, and to set up the narrative and stylistic techniques we’ve talked about as a means of ‘undoing’ things. Could you comment on that ten years on, in the light of what you have written since that interview? LT: I’m less certain now about what can be undone, though I still believe in talking and writing, making things or unmaking them if possible. Seeing ideas as descriptive not as prescriptive is still important to me. That’s why I’m against censorship and interested in offensive jokes. I’m using them in the novel I’m working on now, No Lease on Life. I’m questioning notions of outer and inner, public/ private, how each of us—how I—exist in a framework in which we are affected, bombarded, by the world, and still manage to think, feel, have our own worlds. Writing becomes more important to me even if it sometimes feels more futile. (laughs) More feudal. University of Sussex

in the movie on construction—of image, identity, of power—which is deeply unsettling… LT: It’s very disturbing to recognize how constructed things are and to find yourself in a set-up you never made. In Committed, Frances Farmer is shown as trapped in different narratives or languages— family, love, law, psychiatry, femininity. That’s why I was attracted to her life. She was a tragic, famous figure, her plight was dramatic but not really unusual. How do you get to all that, as a writer or film-maker, and make it extreme, let’s say, visible and visceral, which we wanted to do? One way is to upset the delivery system, the codes. PN: In the same interview you observe that ‘A very important effect of feminism on psychoanalysis has been in talking about the institution as being descriptive rather than prescriptive.’ You go on to say that the discovery that ‘through speaking you can undo things, has made a big difference’. That seems to tie together your various interests in psychoanalysis, film and language, and to set up the narrative and stylistic techniques we’ve talked about as a means of ‘undoing’ things. Could you comment on that ten years on, in the light of what you have written since that interview? LT: I’m less certain now about what can be undone, though I still believe in talking and writing, making things or unmaking them if possible. Seeing ideas as descriptive not as prescriptive is still important to me. That’s why I’m against censorship and interested in offensive jokes. I’m using them in the novel I’m working on now, No Lease on Life. I’m questioning notions of outer and inner, public/ private, how each of us—how I—exist in a framework in which we are affected, bombarded, by the world, and still manage to think, feel, have our own worlds. Writing becomes more important to me even if it sometimes feels more futile. (laughs) More feudal. University of Sussex