Asteroid City (2023) has been described by writer-director Wes Anderson as a“poetic meditation on the meaning of life”. Set in the 1950’s, Asteroid City is a young girl’s coming-of-age story that deviates from one simple narrative line. Asteroid City leaves the comfortable and familiar setting of a summer camp/and opens up to a line of adventure that constitutes a complete interruption of all plans through its confrontation with an outer space alien. Dreamlike switches between different layers of the narrative, which reflect on one another, require the audience to question any and all layers of the events, and penetrate beyond the manifest toward the latent, meaningful, content.

Learning Objectives
As a result of attending this session, participants should be able to:

Explain the importance of differentiating manifest vs. latent content in learning the meaning of a dream
Apply the psychodynamic principle of defensive operations to explain how the dramaturgy of Asteroid City (with its use of atomic testing and space aliens) guides the audience to the writer’s intention of contemplating the meaning of life
Describe the mental ecology and function of the intersection in daily life of trauma with fantasy activity and aesthetic function

Presenter:
Bettina Soestwohner, PhD, PsyD holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and taught literature and language for many years. She is a Research Psychoanalyst and faculty member at the New Center for Psychoanalysis, where she regularly presents in the film series. She taught at the University of California Southern in the Psychology program. A member of the Freudian School of Quebec (EFQ), she is in charge of the work of the EFQ in California. She is a founding member of the group SPIIRAL that works on advancing the theory and practice of psychoanalysis today as required by clashes between cultures and civilizations. Currently she is doing research for a project on Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater and questions of aesthetics. She is interested in the intersection of studies in daily life with trauma, fantasies and aesthetics.

Luis Vallejo, MD is a psychiatrist who attended Vanderbilt University on a full tuition Chancellor’s scholarship and completed his M.D. at Baylor in the Houston Medical Center. Beyond Psychiatry board certification, Dr. Vallejo pursued extensive psychodynamic/analytic training via the Cincinnati Institute, and is a current post-seminar candidate at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. He holds a private practice in Beverly Hills and is a consult-liaison Psychiatrist at Cedars Sinai Beverly Hills Medical Center, Baptist Health Medical Center, and Orbit Telehealth.