For Operative Preservation / For Post-Operative Design

During the course of this practice-based PhD I intend to explore the themes of family, memory and time by researching and writing a feature-length screenplay that will draw on research into autobiographical scriptwriting, establishing a direct and substantive dialogue between my own practice and the work of other recent writers for screen and radio who have explored similar themes. According to Blake Morrison, in his book Too True, ‘Truth becomes the first casualty of a good story.’ Through ongoing reflection upon my emergent work, I intend to explore this statement and examine the boundaries between fact and fiction within autobiographical writing focusing on the work of such writers as Alan Bennett, looking in particular at his recent plays The Lady in the Van and Cocktail Sticks, and the autobiographical work of the film-maker Terence Davies. I will also attempt to identify and explore structural principles shared by scriptwriters and poets such as Tony Harrison, to test how fluid the boundaries are between what are routinely treated as separate subjects; in this sense, the project, with my developing writing at its core, has an interdisciplinary dimension. The creative project will constitute 80% of my PhD studies. The premise for the screenplay is as follows: Having written an autobiographical radio play, a writer invites his parents and his sister to the studio to watch the recording. The screenplay shifts between different time frames as the writer’s version of events are disputed by members of his own family. Whilst the screenplay will explore the proposed research questions within a practical framework, a reflective study, written in parallel, and constituting 20% of the PhD, will formally engage with aspects of critical theory and creative practice. Following principles of ‘practice as research’ and ‘discovery through doing’ recently established in the arts, the entire project attempts to establish a useful dynamic between creative act and critical reflection. Both the creative writing project and the thesis will be integrated, with theoretical analysis feeding directly into the scriptwriting process and vice-versa. As well as reflecting on my own emergent writing by analysing the on-going creative process within the reflective thesis, an interview with the writer and dramatist Alan Bennett will also inform the exegesis.

You have unquestionably the greatest critical mind of this generation – warmed with a charity that might well be the envy of 99 out of 100 Christians, and enriched with an ordering power so extraordinary that its mere operation is itself a creative act, affecting that which it touches & even changing it – just as scientific experimentation is said to alter, by its own action, the substance it is supposed to illuminate.George Kennan to Isaiah Berlin, 16 June 1958I have not the slightest faith in anything I write myself. It is exactly like money – if you make it yourself it seems a forgery. I still belong to a world where what comes from outside, even if it is printed in the newspapers, appears to carry great authority simply by virtue of the fact that it does come from outside, and anything made up by oneself, with however much blood, sweat, tears, seems fake, simply because it is made up by oneself – and the more professional it seems, the closer the fake to reality, the deeper the degree of the forgery. This is no doubt a most neurotic attitude towards one's work, and certainly absurd objectively speaking. Yet I have felt it all my life. Hence total lack of confidence in anything I do.Isaiah Berlin to Jack Stephenson, 21 January 1963

Combustion of solid fuel supplies heat in an iron ore sintering bed and the quality and productivity of the processes are highly dependent on the variation of operational parameters. To set the optimized operation modes through the application of various ideas, a numerical model can be employed prior to the conceptual designing of the actual plant. In this study, the effects of oxygen enrichment, increment of bed height, waste gas recirculation, as well as supplementary gaseous fuel combustion are investigated by employing a previously developed unsteady one-dimensional model of an iron ore sintering bed. Through the simulation, temperature distribution can be observed and used as the key data for the evaluation of the combustion efficiency. Flame front speed and sintering time, which represent propagation speed of the combustion zone, are also employed for quantification of the simulation. Through the parametric studies with numerical analysis, preliminary information about the detailed situation in the bed can be obtained.

The two volumes describe the daily work of the psychoanalyst with his patients and report the various technical problems posed with regard to the method of treatment. They are not intended to be textbooks but simply a collection of practical experiences. The attempt is made to depict a mode of operation that is both situation and patient centred. The attention will first of all be directed to problems of interaction, the dynamics of transference and countertransference, i.e. the »two-person-psychology« (Balint). From this point of view certain Freudian terms, originating from his objective-objectifying standpoint beed to be redefined. The terme to be examined are those of transference, countertransference and the attitude of being like a mirror, a surgeon, neutrl or abstinent. In my opinion the standard methods deduced from Freuds writings need to be revised. I consider them a theoretical construction, an ideal treatment under ideal conditions. Apart from merely practical »instructions« dealing with the diffucult problems of technique, these volumes include critical thoughts about technical problems such as »working through«, the relationship between phantasy and defence; and the question for the concept of reality in psychoanalysis during the process of biographical reconstruction.