Peter Watson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 23 April 1943 Birmingham, England |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of London |
Peter Frank Patrick Watson (born 23 April 1943) [1] is a British intellectual historian and former journalist, now perhaps best known for his work in the history of ideas. His journalistic work includes detailed investigations of auction houses and the international market in stolen antiquities.
Watson attended Cheltenham Grammar School. [2] He graduated in Psychology from Durham in 1964. [1] [3] He subsequently earned a scholarship to study for a diploma in music at La Sapienza and then completed a doctorate at the University of London. [1]
After university Watson trained as a psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic in London under R. D. Laing, but left this profession in the late 1960s after becoming dissatisfied with Freudian theories. [4] Having given up psychology he settled into a career in journalism and edited the first incarnation of Race Today , a journal launched in 1969 by the Institute of Race Relations think-tank. [2] He worked at New Society from 1970 to 1973, eventually serving as deputy editor, and was for four years a member of the Insight team at The Sunday Times . [1]
While working for The Sunday Times he published the book, War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology, which revealed psychological research carried out by various military forces in the Cold War period. This book, Watson's first, had its roots in a 1973 assignment from the Insight team to look into the uses of psychological warfare by the British Army in Northern Ireland during the height of The Troubles. [5] As part of his research Watson visited the Fort Bragg army base in North Carolina, which convinced him that military psychology was more advanced than he had previously imagined. [5] Later, he briefly moved his career to America, where he was New York correspondent of The Times from 1981 to 1982. [1]
His 1984 book, The Caravaggio Conspiracy, is based on his experience going undercover with the Carabinieri to investigate the theft of a Caravaggio painting, the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence , which had been stolen in 1969 from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo. [6] Watson conceived the idea for a book on stolen antiquities in 1979, while the printers of The Sunday Times were on strike and the owners suspended publication for 11 months, giving himself and other writers time to pursue personal projects. [7] He concluded the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was most likely stolen by members of Cosa Nostra. Although unsuccessful in recovering the painting that was the focus of the book, he did manage to obtain six other stolen works. [7]
Watson would later return to the art world as a subject in Sotheby's: The Inside Story (1998). The book accused Sotheby's of selling antiquities it knew to have been stolen. [8] In an interview with Noah Charney for The Daily Beast , he related that the investigation had so damaged Sotheby's reputation that people he knew in the London art world wouldn't speak to him for years afterwards. [9] In a 2000 article for the New Statesman he argued that forgeries in the antiquities trade remained a serious problem, with fake ancient artefacts even making their way into major museums, aided by curators who knew little of archaeology and were liable to be hoodwinked by corrupt dealers. [10]
A third expose of the art world, The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities, from Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums, which he co-wrote with Cecilia Todeschini, was published in 2006. The book detailed the criminal career of Italian art dealer, Giacomo Medici, and his several decades spent supplying museum with illegally excavated and smuggled antiquities. [11] Watson had given evidence at the trial of Medici. [11] Watson and Todeschini were criticised by Hugh Eakin in the New York Review of Books for failing to speak to any of the defendants in the Medici investigation, including former J. Paul Getty Museum curator Marion True - although Watson claimed that none of the defendants would talk, forcing him to rely on documents given to him by the Italian investigators. [11]
Between 1997 and 2007, Watson was a research associate at the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre, part of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge. In 2009 he took part in an Intelligence Squared debate in Hong Kong. Alongside the archaeologist Colin Renfrew he spoke against the motion 'Cultural Treasures Belong in Their Country of Origin'. [12] He has published thirteen books, including The German Genius, published by Simon & Schuster in 2010. [13] [14]
Watson is an atheist, and is particularly critical of monotheism. [15] He has argued that psychotherapy has become a substitute for religion, and that people more often seek therapy as a way to find meaning in their lives than to treat mental illness. [16] He is a member of the Reform Club and describes himself as a Social Democrat politically. [1]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. He was a prolific author, illustrator, and correspondent, and a complex and controversial character, presumably best known through his "autobiography" Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Peter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a two-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968), a bestseller; and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving was an American museum executive and consultant and the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness.
Leon Levy was an American investor, mutual fund manager, and philanthropist. At his death, Forbes magazine called him “a Wall Street investment genius,” who helped create both mutual funds and hedge funds.
Pierre Marie Félix Janet was a pioneering French psychologist, physician, philosopher, and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory.
The Euphronios Krater is an ancient Greek terra cotta calyx-krater, a bowl used for mixing wine with water. Created around the year 515 BC, it is the only complete example of the surviving 27 vases painted by the renowned Euphronios and is considered one of the finest Ancient Greek vases in existence.
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.
Robert Emmanuel Hecht, Jr. was an American antiquities art dealer based in Paris.
In psychology, the psyche is the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious.
Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict. The term "looted art" reflects bias, and whether particular art has been taken legally or illegally is often the subject of conflicting laws and subjective interpretations of governments and people; use of the term "looted art" in reference to a particular art object implies that the art was taken illegally.
Giacomo Medici is an Italian antiquities smuggler and art dealer who was convicted in 2004 of dealing in stolen ancient artifacts. His operation was thought to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market".
Robin Symes was a British antiquities dealer who was unmasked as a key player in an international criminal network that traded in looted archaeological treasures. Symes and his long-term partner Christo Michaelides met and formed a business partnership in the 1970s, and Symes became one of Britain's most prominent and successful antiquities dealers. However, after Michaelides died accidentally in 1999, his family took legal action to recover his share of the Symes company's assets, and when the matter went to trial, Symes was found to have lied in his evidence about the extent and value of his property; he was subsequently charged with and convicted of contempt of court, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, of which he served seven months. Further investigations by Italian authorities revealed in January 2016 that Symes's involvement in the illegal antiquities trade had been even more extensive than previously thought, and that he had hidden a vast hoard of looted antiquities in 45 crates at the Geneva Freeport storage warehouse in Switzerland for 15 years to conceal them from Michaelides's family.
The Cloisters Cross, is a complex 12th-century ivory Romanesque altar cross or processional cross. It is named after The Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which acquired it in 1963.
In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire for her father and hostility toward her mother is referred to as the feminine Oedipus complex. The general concept was considered by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), although the term itself was introduced in his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (1910).
The archeological site of Bura is located in the Tillabéry Region, of the Tera Department, in southwest Niger. The Bura archeological site has given its name to the area's first-millennium Bura culture.
The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, better known as the Carabinieri T.P.C., is the branch of the Italian Carabinieri responsible for combatting art and antiquities crimes and is viewed as an experienced and efficient task force.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
