The writing of mourning in Hamnet

clinic and art in the training of the analyst

Abstract

We live in dark times for psychoanalysis in Brazil and worldwide. Training institutes, attempts to regulate the profession, and an era of diagnoses where psychic processes are pathologized and suffering is framed within a logic of suppression and resolution. This text is part of a wager on the role of art in the analyst’s training, addressing mourning in the film Hamnet. The movie crosses the screen’s boundaries and allows us to think clearly about the clinical treatment of mourning, revisiting Freud and Lacan, proving that a fundamental part of the analyst’s formation lies in articulating psychoanalysis with the artistic and cultural manifestations of their time. We know that is not in the classroom that an analyst is formed, but in the articulation of experiences from their own analysis, training with peers, and the effects of art on their listening. Hamnet pierces us regarding the role of art in the unconscious and the turns subjects take with mourning, on screen or on the couch.