Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 8. Camille Claudel. Susannah Wilson conducts Inner Circle Seminar 178 (17 June 2012)



Camille Claudel

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

8. Camille Claudel
(1864–1943)

Susannah Wilson
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 178
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 17 June 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Camille Claudel (8 December 1864 – 19 October 1943) is now recognised as a sculptor of genius. She was the older sister of the French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel (1868 – 1955), and a colleague and lover of the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917). However, while these men were internationally acclaimed, she was incarcerated in a psychiatric institution for the last thirty years of her life, diagnosed as ‘suffering’ from ‘paranoia’. One of her ‘symptoms’ was her allegation that Rodin had stolen her work. But Susannah Wilson, a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Warwick, in her important book, Voices from the Asylum: Four French Women Writers, 1850 – 1920 (2010), gives evidence that Rodin had signed his own name to some of Claudel’s sculptures. What was going on? In today’s seminar, Susannah Wilson examines Claudel’s writings – her ‘voice from the asylum’ – to reveal the truth in her ‘delusions’, and to help us explore the social interactions that led to her being locked up.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com
For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.