Ivan Ward Whacking and Strumming: A Freudian Perspective Freud called it the ‘primal addiction’, but is there a more positive way of looking at masturbation from a Freudian perspective? Ivan Ward is Deputy Director and Head of Learning at the Freud Museum London and manager of the museum’s conference programme. He is the author of a number of books and papers on psychoanalytic theory and on the applications of psychoanalysis to social and cultural issues. His latest publication is ‘Parsifal as Castration Drama’ (2017) in a special issue of The Wagner Journal based on a conference organised by the Freud Museum in 2016. Solitary Pleasures in art and psychoanalysisis a day-long conference to accompanySolitary Pleasures, a group exhibition at the Freud Museum. The conference, like the exhibition, reveals masturbation as a topic that can transform our understanding of human subjectivity and s