Daseinanalysis Seminars
DISCUSSIONS ABOUT DASEINANALYSIS,
28TH SEPTEMBER 2026
Daseinanalytic institutes are few in number and widely scattered throughout the world. Each has its preparation programs, faculties and members. Each has its particular history, flavor, culture, and language. Many of us already meet in seminars and conferences, established forums and webinars, some live, some online. Others prefer to work autonomously.
Perhaps the one feature daseinanalysts treasure most is our independence.
It is not without some truth to say that there are as many approaches to daseinanalysis as there are daseinanalysts. It is well known that there are quite a few people out there who are in academia or work as independent scholars and are not daseinanalysts but are interested in what we do. They are philosophers, teachers, doctors and writers. The time has come, it seems, to talk about our common interest in an informal discussion group which would meet without a specified leader.
DaDa was originally created by Miles Groth and Rafi Miętkiewicz. Since June 2026, it has been continued independently by Daseinanalysis Beyond Institutions.
DASEINFLIX SCREENING SEPTEMBER 2026
In this session, we turned to Persona — a work often described as one of the most elusive and demanding in the history of cinema.
At its surface, the film follows the encounter between a silent actress, Elisabet Vogler, and her nurse, Alma. Yet what unfolds is not a story in the conventional sense, but a gradual disintegration of boundaries—between two women, between speech and silence, and ultimately between image and reality itself.
From the beginning, the film resisted stable interpretation. Critics recognized its precision and formal rigor, yet widely agreed that it defied clear analysis and simple categorization. Persona became, for many, a kind of “white whale”—a work that invites interpretation while refusing to be exhausted by it. Its very force lies in this: it cannot be reduced to a single meaning.
As Ingmar Bergman himself acknowledged, the film reaches toward something he did not wish to fully define—suggesting that in Persona he approached the limits of what could be said, touching a dimension that remains, in a sense, beyond words. The title itself—drawn from the Latin for “mask,” and echoing Carl Jung’s notion of the constructed persona—points toward the tension between appearance and what withdraws behind it.
Visually, the film is carried by an intensity of presence: stark compositions, radical close-ups, and the work of cinematographer Sven Nykvist, whose collaboration with Bergman gives the image its unsettling clarity.
Bergman resisted closing the film with explanation – perhaps this is why Persona remains so important for a daseinanalytic reading: it does not offer a psychological solution, but opens a space in which phenomena can be experienced.
“I’ve really managed to make a film that has sparked a debate… It would be tactless of me to barge in on that debate and talk about what I really meant by the film… I prefer not to say anything at all. I played my part in this debate when I made the film.”
Years later, he would still return to Persona as one of his most radical achievements—a moment in which cinema allowed him to reach toward what resists language.