Chris Flor

Chris Flor earned his Magister Artium (M.A.) in American Studies and German Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2004. His focus of academic analysis is the production of myths and mythologies in mainstream entertainment as well as the psychological and pathological patterns in these texts and in their reception, mostly from a Freudian/Lacanian perspective. He was co-organizer of the student-conference "Haunted Dreams. Nightmares in American Culture" at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2002. He is now living in the US with his family.

"Normal Again": Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Psychotic Narration
(with Philipp Kneis)

According to classic techniques of psychoanalytical literary analysis, a popular text can be understood as a kind of collective symptom, suggesting that we take pleasure in the symptom we are presented with through the text, just as the neurotic uses his/her symptom or the psychotic uses his/her delusion to minimize their suffering, or as an attempt to heal him/herself. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer it is mostly themes not of neurosis but of psychosis/schizophrenia that occur. The elements of the show's "mythology" show similarities with the content of schizophrenic delusional con-structions.

held at: Haunted Dreams. Nightmares in American Culture, May 23-25, 2002