Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

Episode 1 – 'On Repression' (1915)

Perry Hughes and Tom DeRose discuss Freud's influential paper 'On Repression'.  

Freud in Focus 5: Episode 3

In this episode, Tom welcomes back Jamie Ruers to the programme, and they discuss the current Freud Museum exhibition Freud and Latin America, which she curated.

Freud in Focus 5: Episode 2

In the episode, Tom is joined by Professor Roman Gerodimos, Professor Candida Yates, and Mark Leipacher of The Faction, who reflect on an event held at the Freud Museum which explored the theme of Shame in Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

Freud in Focus 5: Episode1

In this episode Tom is in conversation with Marina Maniadaki about how Freud’s famous letter to Romain Rolland, entitled a ‘Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis’, inspired her curation of our recent exhibition Tracing Freud on the Acropolis.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 6

In the final part of series 4 of the Freud in Focus podcast, Tom and Jamie discuss the enduring legacy of Freud’s paper, ‘Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva’.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 5

In this episode of ‘Freud in Focus’, Jamie and Tom continue to discuss Freud’s retelling of Jensen’s Gradiva.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 4

In this episode of ‘Freud in Focus’, Jamie and Tom continue to discuss Freud’s retelling of Jensen’s Gradiva.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 3

In this episode of ‘Freud in Focus’, Tom and Jamie will be discussing Freud’s first full-scale analysis of a literary text, the charming and summery, ‘Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva’.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 2

This week Tom discusses Freud’s lifelong fascination with archaeology and the ancient world with Professor Miriam Leonard (UCL), one of the curators of our current exhibition, 'Freud's Antiquity: Object, Idea, Desire'.

Freud in Focus 4: Episode 1

This week Tom and Jamie discuss Freud's ‘Constructions in Analysis’ (1937). This was his final completed paper on psychoanalytic technique, in which he compares psychoanalysis to archaeology. This episode is an exploration of the ideas in our current exhibition, 'Freud's Antiquity: Object, Idea, Desire'.

Freud in Focus - Summer Shorts: On Transience

To help usher in the autumn season, Tom and Jamie discuss Freud’s beautiful short paper ‘On Transience’ (1916) in the final episode of the Freud in Focus, Summer Shorts series.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus - Summer Shorts: Humour

In this episode of Freud in Focus, Summer Shorts, Jamie and Tom discuss Freud’s 1927 paper entitled ‘Humour’. 

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus - Summer Shorts: Creative Writers and Daydreaming

In our new series of Freud in Focus, entitled Summer Shorts, Jamie and Tom will be discussing some of Freud's shorter, lighter papers. The first text under the microscope is 'Creative Writers and Daydreaming' (1908). 

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Bonus Episode

In part five of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the last chapter of Civilisation and its Discontents, in which Freud offers his final thoughts on the place of the individual in society.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Episode 5

In part five of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the last chapter of Civilisation and its Discontents, in which Freud offers his final thoughts on the place of the individual in society.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Episode 4

In part four of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the sixth and seventh chapters of Civilisation and its Discontents, in which Freud recounts the history of instinct theory, and explores the origin of the sense of guilt.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Episode 3

In part three of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the forth and fifth chapters of Civilisation and its Discontents, in which Freud discusses the origins of society, writes two extraordinary footnotes, and introduces a new factor into his exploration of the causes of discontent in civilisation.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Episode 2

In part two of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the second and third chapters of Civilisation and its Discontents, where Freud extends his critique of religion and discusses the techniques available to help deal with human suffering.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 3: Episode 1

In part one of our new podcast series Jamie and Tom discuss the first chapter of Civilisation and its Discontents, looking at Freud’s analysis of the ‘oceanic feeling’, and the famous archaeological metaphor of the mind.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 2: Bonus Episode

To close our Uncanny series, we are bringing you a special bonus episode from our archive. In a live lecture originally delivered at the Freud Museum in January 2020, Dr Aaron Balick looks at deepfakes, artificial intelligence, and social media algorithms as he uncovers 'Why might some forms of technology give us the creeps'.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 2: Episode 4

In this final episode exploring The Uncanny, Tom and Jamie look at the impact Freud's paper had on literature and the arts. Our hosts also reflect upon the Freud Museum's 2019 exhibition The Uncanny: A Centenary.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 2: Episode 3

In this episode, Tom and Jamie will look at the third and final Part of Freud's The Uncanny, where Freud concludes by differentiating the uncanny in literature to real-life experiences.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 2: Episode 2

In this episode, Tom and Jamie will be looking at part 2 of Freud’s paper The Uncanny, in which Freud delves into the wonderful world of Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’ and discusses doubles, hauntings and inexplicable repetitions in his search for the core of the uncanny effect.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus 2: Episode 1

In the first episode, Tom and Jamie will introduce Freud's 1919 paper The Uncanny. We will look closely at the unusual structure of the first section in this 3-part essay.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Episode 5

In the fifth and final instalment of our new podcast series, Tom will be joined by Emilia Raczkowska, the Freud Museum’s Education and Outreach Manager, to discuss how psychoanalysis has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Episode 4

In this episode, Jamie Ruers is in conversation with the Freud Museum's curator, Bryony Davies. They will discuss the forthcoming exhibition '1920/2020: Freud in Pandemic', which addresses the parallels between Freud's experience with the Spanish Flu and the COVID-19 pandemic today.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Episode 3

In the third episode of our new podcast series, we’ll be looking at the final two chapters of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and tracing the emergence of Freud’s  New Dual Instinct Theory, and his introduction of the Death Drive.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Episode 2

 

In the second part of our new podcast series we’ll be diving into the central part of the text, in which Freud discusses the ‘compulsion to repeat’. We’ll also be focussing on the concept of Speculation in Freud’s work, and trace a pathway to the appearance of the new Dual Instinct Theory.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Episode 1

 

In the first part of our new podcast series, we’ll be exploring the historical context of Freud’s ground-breaking work ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, and discussing some of the prominent themes arising from the first 2 chapters, including Freud’s famous account of the ‘fort-da’ game.

Producer: Karolina Heller

Freud in Focus: Pilot

The Freud Museum London is launching a brand new podcast called ‘Freud in Focus’ which will look in-depth at some of Freud’s key texts in a discussion format. The series will be presented by Tom DeRose and Jamie Ruers.

In the first five episodes, we will look at one of Freud’s most influential and controversial texts, Beyond the Pleasure Principle which was published in 1920. Starting with close readings of the text itself, we will then go on to think about its relevance for us today in the 21st-century.

The first episode will be aired Wednesday, 17th February 2021 and a new episode will be released every other Wednesday.

 

Producer: Karolina Heller

 

Fratriarchy, with Juliet Mitchell

The Freud Museum is delighted to welcome Professor Juliet Mitchell to celebrate her latest publication Fratriarchy: The Sibling Trauma and the Law of the Mother (Routledge, 2023).

On stage with Juliet Mitchell is Holly Porter, an anthropologist and associate director of the Gender Studies Centre founded by Mitchell in Cambridge University; Rosemary Davies, a Fellow and Training analyst of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and founder member, Manuel Batsch , with a PhD from Juliet’s programme at UCL and now completing his analytic training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. All four speakers give brief talks then open it to discussion with the audience.

The event was hosted and chaired by Dr Giuseppe Albano, Director of the Freud Museum.

This event took place at the Freud Museum London on 4 October 2023.

Daddy Issues - Katherine Angel in conversation with Josh Cohen

In the wake of #MeToo, we have begun to talk more openly about the widespread harm inflicted by men on women. But little has been said about the fact that many of these men are also fathers.

Join author Katherine Angel for a discussion on her latest book Daddy Issues with Josh Cohen.

Bold, challenging and nuanced, Daddy Issues examines the place of fathers in contemporary culture and asks how the mixture of love and hatred we feel towards our fathers can be turned into a relationship that is generative rather than destructive. If we are to effectively dismantle patriarchy, it is vital that fathers are kept on the hook.

“A timely, necessary work from one of our most vital thinkers. Moving with ease across psychoanalysis, popular culture and literary criticism, weaponising the thought of Woolf, Winnicott and Solanas, Daddy Issues flips the familial script and takes aim at all our Daddies: domestic, cultural, patriarchal, even presidential. The result is a wincingly perceptive, deeply engaged book, one that takes us into the dark heart of a cultural fixation, then shows us, with deep care and empathy, the way back out.”—Sam Byers, author of PERFIDIOUS ALBION

Katherine Angel is the author of Unmastered, A Book on Desire Most Difficult to Tell (Penguin, FSG). Katherine has a PhD in the history of sexuality and psychiatry from the University of Cambridge, and teaches creative and critical writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of many books, including How to Read Freud (2005), The Private Life (2013) and, most recently, Not Working (2019).

Author’s talk: Alenka Zupančič - What is Sex?

In What is Sex?, Alenka Zupančič approaches the question of sexuality from a Lacanian perspective, considering it a properly philosophical problem for psychoanalysis.

Drawing on Freud and Lacan, Zupančič argues that sexuality is at the point of a “short circuit” between ontology and epistemology.

Sexuality and knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between being and knowledge in their very negativity.

About the author

Alenka Zupančič is a Slovene philosopher and social theorist. She works as research advisor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences. She is also professor at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, and at the Graduate School ZRC SAZU (Ljubljana). She is the author of numerous articles and books on psychoanalysis and philosophy, including Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan; The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two; Why Psychoanalysis: Three Interventions; The Odd One In: On Comedy; and, most recently, What is Sex?

Sharon Kivland: The Missed Encounter

...a disappointment, an ear, and a snail.

Anouchka Grose: Narcissism, Censorship and the Unconscious

This paper explores Freud and Dalí’s rather different ideas about censorship. Starting with their comically perplexing meeting, it will also look at the myth of the ‘crazy artist’ in the context of Freud’s ideas about the unconscious and narcissism.

Everyday Madness: Lisa Appignanesi in conversation with Adam Phillips

Lisa Appignanesi discusses her new book, Everyday Madness: on Grief, Anger, Loss and Love (September 2018) with Adam Phillips.

‘The small translucent bottle of shampoo outlived him. It was the kind you take home from hotels in distant places. For over a year it had sat on the shower shelf where he had left it. I looked at it every day.”

After the death of her partner of thirty-two years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. The dead of prior generations loomed large and haunting. Then, too, the cultural and political moment seemed to collude with her condition: everywhere people were dislocated and angry.

In this electrifying and brave examination of an ordinary enough death and its aftermath, Appignanesi uses all her evocative and analytic powers to scrutinize her own and our society’s experience of grieving, the effects of loss and the potent, mythical space it occupies in our lives.

With searing honesty, lashed by humour, she navigates us onto the terrain of childhood, the way it forms our feelings of love and hate, and steers us towards a less tumultuous version of the everyday.

This book may be short, but life, death, madness, love, and grandchildren, are all there seen through the eyes of a writer who is ever aware of the historical and current vagaries of woman’s condition.

 

Everyday Madness: on Grief, Anger, Loss and Love is available
from the Freud Museum Shop.

‘Appignanesi luminously conveys the wayward emotions that make bereavement a language that is hard to understand, yet speaks to us every day when we experience a great loss. You will find all of life in this rewarding, scholarly and entertaining conversation about freedom, Freud, fury, enduring love, and how mythic and modern families haunt each other’
Deborah Levy

‘Wonderful, moving, extraordinary. It is sui generis. I feel enormously privileged to have read it – twice. Its structure is remarkable – an enacting of the last two years. Bravo bravo’
Edmund de Waal

Lisa Appignanesi has been a university lecturer in European Studies and was Chair of the Freud Museum London. Her works of non-fiction include ‘Freud’s Women’ (with John Forrester), a biographical portrait of Simone de Beauvoir, and a history of cabaret. She has edited ‘The Rushdie File’ and a number of books on contemporary culture, as well as producing various films for television. Lisa Appignanesi lives in London with her two children.

Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Observer and the New York Times, and he is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations. His most recent book is In Writing and he recently curated an exhibition, The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined, at the Barbican, London.

Class and Psychoanalysis

Joanna Ryan in discussion with Barry Watt

What does psychoanalysis have to say about the emotional landscapes of class, the hidden injuries and disavowed privileges? How does class figure in clinical work and what part does it play in psychotherapeutic trainings?

In these times of increasing inequality, Joanna Ryan will discuss aspects of her timely new book Class and Psychoanalysis: Landscapes of Inequality, exploring what can be learned about the psychic formations of class, and the class formations of psychoanalysis. Addressing some of the many challenges facing a psychoanalysis that aims to include class in its remit, she holds the tension between the radical and progressive potential of psychoanalysis, in its unique understandings of the unconscious, with its status as a mainly expensive and exclusive practice.

The aim of this evening’s discussion, part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, is to open up debate about this important but neglected subject.

“Class and Psychoanalysis is a text of great importance. Joanna Ryan writes in a clear and objective way about the neglect of social class in psychoanalysis, yet behind this objectivity is a passionate involvement that will strike a chord with all concerned psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. The book presents the best available overview of the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis in relation to social class, combining this with interview material from the author’s own studies of psychotherapists to give a detailed and compelling picture of how class enters the consulting room. Engaging with this profound yet accessible book is essential for all who care about class injuries and how we might find ways to respond to them.” - Stephen Frosh, Professor of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London

Joanna Ryan, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist; she has worked widely in clinical practice, teaching and supervision; in academic research; and in the politics of psychotherapy. She is co-author (with N. O'Connor) of Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis; co-editor (with S. Cartledge) of Sex and Love: New Thoughts on Old Contradictions; author of The Politics of Mental Handicap and many other publications.

Barry Watt is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a senior psychotherapist at the Psychosis Therapy Project, a member of The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and a social housing activist and campaigner.

The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan - Lorenzo Chiesa

In The Not-Two, Lorenzo Chiesa examines the treatment of logic and God in Lacan’s later work.

Chiesa draws for the most part from Lacan’s Seminars of the early 1970s, as they revolve around the axiom "There is no sexual relationship." Chiesa provides both a close reading of Lacan’s effort to formalize sexual difference as incompleteness and an assessment of its broader implications for philosophical realism and materialism.

Chiesa argues that "There is no sexual relationship" is for Lacan empirically and historically circumscribed by psychoanalysis, yet self-evident in our everyday lives. Lacan believed that we have sex because we love, and that love is a desire to be One in face of the absence of the sexual relationship. Love presupposes a real "not-two." The not-two condenses the idea that our love and sex lives are dictated by the impossibility of fusing man’s contradictory being with the heteros of woman as a fundamentally uncountable Other. Sexual liaisons are sustained by a transcendental logic, the so-called phallic function that attempts to overcome this impossibility.

Chiesa also focuses on Lacan’s critical dialogue with modern science and formal logic, as well as his dismantling of sexuality as considered by mainstream biological discourse. Developing a new logic of sexuation based on incompleteness requires the relinquishing of any alleged logos of life and any teleological evolution.

For Lacan, the truth of incompleteness as approached psychoanalytically through sexuality would allow us to go further in debunking traditional onto-theology and replace it with a “para-ontology” yet to be developed. Given the truth of incompleteness, Chiesa asks, can we think such a truth in itself without turning incompleteness into another truth about truth, that is, into yet another figure of God as absolute being?

Lorenzo Chiesa is a philosopher who has published extensively on psychoanalysis. His works in this field include Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (MIT Press, 2007); Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation (Re.press, 2014); The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan (MIT Press, 2016); and The Virtual Point of Freedom (Northwestern University Press, 2016). Since 2014, he has been Visiting Professor at the European University at Saint Petersburg and at the Freud’s Dream Museum of the same city. Previously, he was Professor of Modern European Thought at the University of Kent, where he founded and directed the Centre for Critical Thought.

In Writing: Adam Phillips in conversation with Josh Cohen

In his latest publication In Writing acclaimed psychoanalyst and writer, Adam Phillips celebrates the art of close reading and asks what it is to defend literature in a world that is increasingly devaluing language in this enjoyable collection of essays on literature.

Through an exhilarating series of encounters with – and vivid readings of – writers he has loved, from Byron and Barthes to Shakespeare and Sebald, Phillips infuses the love of writing with deep insights drawn from his work as a practicing psychoanalyst to demonstrate, in his own unique style, how literature and psychoanalysis can speak to and of each other.

For Adam Phillips - as for Freud and many of his followers - poetry and poets have always held an essential place, as both precursors and unofficial collaborators in the psychoanalytic project. But the same has never held true in reverse. What, Phillips wonders, at the start of this deeply engaging book, has psychoanalysis meant for writers? And what can writing do for psychoanalysis?

He discusses how literature and psychoanalysis can speak to and of each other with psychoanalyst and writer, Josh Cohen.

'Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored.'
Observer

'It is a pleasure simply to hear him think.'
Sunday Telegraph

Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Observer and the New York Times, and he is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations. His most recent book is In Writing and he recently curated an exhibition, The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined, at the Barbican, London.

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice and Professor of Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London. He is the author of four books and numerous articles on psychoanalysis, modern literature and cultural theory, including How to Read Freud and, most recently, The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark. He is currently completing a book on inertia on psychic and cultural life, provisionally titled Not Working.

Freud’s ’Three Essays’ and the Critique of Heteronormativity

Re-reading Freud's 1905 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

This book presentation is devoted to the newly translated and annotated English edition of Freud’s 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Verso, 2016).

Freud’s publication is one of the grounding texts of 20th-century European thinking. In it Freud develops a highly innovative theory of sexuality for which pathology serves as a model to understand human existence. Freud published this text five times during his lifetime. In the book presentation, the editors will highlight the potential of the text in its relevance for contemporary psychoanalytic theory. This potential concerns three main issues. First, the text is important as regards its theory of sexuality: infantile sexuality is seen as strictly autoerotic and without an object, and hence, cannot be described in oedipal terms – Freud’s first theory of sexuality is a non-oedipal theory. Second, Freud opts for a very interesting, "pathoanalytic“ perspective on sexuality, when using the psychoneuroses (especially hysteria) as the model to understand the general human sexual constitution. Third, Freud offers a profound critique of heteronormative and functional theories of sexuality and the perversions in his contemporary psychiatric and sexological literature. Re-reading the Three Essays shows that we have to reconsider the genesis of Freudian thinking, and psychoanalysis’ potential in contemporary debates on sexuality, gender and normativity. 

Biographies:

Philippe Van Haute is Professor at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor of philosophy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a psychoanalyst of the Belgian School for Psychoanalysis and a founding member of the Société internationale de psychanalyse et de philosophie/ International Society for Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. He has published numerous books, among them Against Adaptation (2002), Confusion of Tongues (with Tomas Geyskens, 2004), From Death Drive to Attachment Theory (with Tomas Geyskens, 2007), and A Non-oedipal Psychoanalysis? (with Tomas Geyskens, 2012). He is the coeditor of the book series Figures of the Unconscious (Louvain University Press).

Herman Westerink is Lecturer at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is a member of the Société internationale de psychanalyse et de philosophie/International Society for Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. He has published numerous books and articles on psychoanalysis, including A Dark Trace: Sigmund Freud on the Sense of Guilt (2009) and The Heart of Man’s Destiny (2012). He is Editor of the book series Sigmund Freud's Werke: Wiener Interdisziplinäre Kommentare.

Lacan on Love: An Interview with Bruce Fink

Lacanian psychoanalyst Bruce Fink discusses his latest work, Lacan on Love.

Quintessentially fascinating, love intrigues and perplexes us, and drives much of what we do in life. As wary as we may be of its illusions and disappointments, many of us fall blindly into its traps and become ensnared time and again. Deliriously mad excitement turns to disenchantment, if not deadening repetition, and we wonder how we shall ever break out of this vicious cycle.

Can psychoanalysis – with ample assistance from philosophers, poets, novelists, and songwriters – give us a new perspective on the wellsprings and course of love? Can it help us fathom how and why we are often looking for love in all the wrong places, and are fundamentally confused about “what love really is”?

In this lively and wide-ranging exploration of love throughout the ages, Fink argues that it can. Taking within his compass a vast array of traditions – from Antiquity to the courtly love poets, Christian love, and Romanticism – and providing an in-depth examination of Freud and Lacan on love and libido, Fink unpacks Lacan’s paradoxical claim that “love is giving what you don’t have.” He shows how the emptiness or lack we feel within ourselves gets covered over or entwined in love, and how it is possible and indeed vital to give something to another that we feel we ourselves don’t have.

This first-ever commentary on Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference, provides readers with a clear and systematic introduction to Lacan’s views on love. It will be of great value to students and scholars of psychology and of the humanities generally, and to analysts of all persuasions.

Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan's Seminar VIII, Transference is published by Polity. Available from the Freud Museum Shop.

Conceptualising and Treating Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective - Stijn Vanheule

Starting from the hypothesis that psychosis makes up a structure, with a precise status for the unconscious, Stijn Vanheule explores how, from a Lacanian point of view, the treatment of psychosis is organized. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the psychotic symptom, or elementary phenomenon, and to the way transference characteristically takes shape. Crucial to this approach of treatment is that the psychoanalyst aims at restoring a place for the subject in relation to the Other, which is threatened in episodes of acute psychosis.

Stijn Vanheule is professor of psychoanalysis and chair of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University (Belgium), and a psychoanalyst in private practice (member of the New Lacanian School for Psychoanalysis and World Association of Psychoanalyse). He is the author of The Subject of Psychosis – A Lacanian Perspective(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Diagnosis and the DSM – A Critical Review (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical psychodiagnostics.

From the 'Psychosis and Psychoanalysis', a conference organised in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project, a therapy service for people experiencing psychosis.

A Consumer’s Guide to Therapy

Professor Brett Kahr in Conversation with Dan Chambers

What actually happens in psychotherapy? And does it really work?

Psychotherapy has become a mainstay of our emotional wellbeing, and yet, in spite of its century-long track record, many people still regard “therapy” with a certain suspicion. Is psychotherapy simply a self-indulgent exercise in navel-gazing for bored, well-heeled neurotics with too much time on their hands, or is it, in fact, an essential route to the achievement of solid mental health, enhanced creativity and productivity, and richer, more gratifying intimate relationships?

In this seminar, the television producer Dan Chambers will speak with Professor Brett Kahr, one of Great Britain’s leading psychotherapists, and together, they will explore in detail both the myths and the realities about the psychotherapeutic process. The evening will consider such fundamental and frequently asked questions as:

• What actually happens in psychotherapy?
• How long might therapy last?
• Does therapy blame everything on one’s parents?
• Will I be cured or will I be brain-washed?
• How do I find an experienced and trustworthy psychotherapist?
• How much will psychotherapy cost?
• Will I still recognise myself at the end of the process?
• Might there be any risks associated with undergoing therapy?

We will consider psychotherapy in its historical context, examining the way in which the art and science of psychotherapy has evolved since Sigmund Freud’s creation of the “talking cure”.

This evening workshop will allow ample time for discussion and questions from the audience.

 

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for over thirty-five years. He is currently Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London, and Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. He has worked in many branches of the psychotherapy profession as clinician, teacher, researcher, author, and broadcaster, having served previously as Resident Psychotherapist on B.B.C. Radio 2. Author of eight books including Life Lessons from Freud and, also, the best-selling Sex and the Psyche, he is also Series Editor of the “Forensic Psychotherapy Monograph Series” for Karnac Books and Series Co-Editor of the “History of Psychoanalysis Series”. He practices psychotherapy with individuals and with couples in Hampstead, North London, and he is a Trustee of the Freud Museum and of Freud Museum Publications.

Dan Chambers is the Creative Director of Blink Films, one of Great Britain’s leading factual independent television production companies, with an output covering history, science, documentary, and cookery for all the key channels in the United Kingdom and all the leading factual channels in America. Previously, he has been Head of Science Commissioning at Channel 4 and the Director of Programmes at Channel 5. He has directed science documentaries for the Equinox science strand, and he has produced the Channel 4 and P.B.S. history strand, Secrets of the Dead. Dan studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and he is currently a Governor of the London Film School and a Trustee of the Freud Museum.

Avoiding the Object (On Purpose): Cornelia Parker and Darian Leader

Discussion Only.

Artist Cornelia Parker will be in conversation with Psychoanalyst and Author, Darian Leader, discussing her art and its relation to the unconscious. They will talk about transitional objects, avoiding the object on purpose, memory, and violence as a metaphor.

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997, Cornelia Parker became well known for her installations and interventions, including Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991 (Tate Modern) where she suspended the fragments of a garden shed, blown up for her by the British Army, and The Maybe, a collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton, at the Serpentine Gallery in 1995. She is currently working on the annual roof commission for the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

She has works in the Tate Collection, MoMA and Met Museum NY and in numerous public and private collections in Europe and the USA. She was elected to the Royal Academy in 2009 and awarded an OBE 2010. She is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London.

Darian Leader is a writer, psychoanalyst, trustee of the Freud Museum and founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He has written numerous books, including Strictly Bipolar (2013), What is Madness? (2011), The New Black (2008) and Freud's Footnotes (2000).

Wittgenstein’s Dream

Gavin Turk in conversation with Joseph Kosuth, moderated by James Putnam

 

‘We are asleep. Our life is like a dream. But in our better hours we wake up just enough to realise that we are dreaming.’ - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Gavin Turk’s installation and intervention in Freud’s former residence, Wittgenstein’s Dream, investigates the intriguing conceptual dialogue between two enlightened Viennese thinkers of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

Gavin Turk was born 1967 in Guildford, from 1989-91 he attended the Royal College of Art. For his MA exhibition show Cave, Turk notoriously presented a whitewashed studio space containing only a blue heritage plaque commemorating his presence. Though refused a degree, his subsequent infamy attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi and Turk became part of a loosely associated group known as the ‘Young British Artists’ (YBAs). He has continued to show worldwide and has work in many national museum collections (including Tate and MOMA). His work often deals with concerns of authority and identity and has taken up many forms including the painted bronze, the waxwork, the recycled art-historical icon and the use of litter.

Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of Conceptual art and installation art, initiating language-based works and appropriation strategies in the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, influenced the development of his work. Kosuth’s installation Zero & Not was exhibited at Berggasse 19 - The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, marking the centennial of Sigmund Freud’s birth. In its artistic and curatorial approach the installation drew on his seminal exhibition projects Wittgenstein – Das Spiel des Unsagbaren at the Vienna Secession (1989) in Austria and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Wittgenstein’s Dream is the latest in the critically acclaimed ongoing series of Freud Museum London exhibitions curated by James Putnam that have included projects by Sophie Calle, Sarah Lucas, Ellen Gallagher, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Mat Collishaw and Miroslaw Balka.

Wittgenstein’s Dream is on display at The Freud Museum London 26 November 2015 – 7 February 2016 

In association with Ben Brown Fine Arts.

From the ’Authoritarian’ to the ’Neo-Liberal’ Personality

Understanding the Socio-psychological Roots of Contemporary Right-wing Populism

 

Samir Gandesha

 

One of the key problems of contemporary politics is the presence and growing power of right-wing populist movements throughout the Western world from the US "Tea Party," to Britain's UKIP to Pegida in Germany and Golden Dawn in Greece. This paper poses the following question: To what extent is it possible to draw upon the social-psychological concept of the "authoritarian personality" in the work of Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno et. al. to understand the distinctive populist personality structure of contemporary neo-liberal capitalism?

 

Samir Gandesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of the Humanities and the Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. He specializes in modern European thought and culture, with a particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. His work has appeared in Political Theory, New German Critique, Kant Studien, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Topia, the European Legacy, the European Journal of Social Theory, Art Papers, the Cambridge Companion to Adorno and Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader as well as in several other edited books. He is co-editor with Lars Rensmann of "Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations" (Stanford, 2012). His book (coedited with Johan Hartle) "Reification and Spectacle: On the Timeliness of Western Marxism" (University of Amsterdam Press) is forthcoming later this year and he has also recently completed (also with Johan Hartle) "Poetry of the Future: Marx and the Aesthetic." He has recently lectured at the Centre for the Study of Marxist Social Theory at the University of Nanjing, the Taipei Biennale and at the School for Language, Literature and Cultural Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

On Not Being Terrified of What you Hear

Panel discussion - Jane Haberlin, Jeanette Winterson and Eleanor Longden

Hearing voices has been described as everything from schizophrenic to godlike. Radical psychiatry in the 1960s contested what today are termed 'auditory hallucinations' seeing them as containing what couldn't be said. The psychology researcher Eleanor Longden isn't crazy -- and neither are many other people who hear voices in their heads. She says the psychic phenomenon is a "creative and ingenious survival strategy" that should be seen "not as an abstract symptom of illness to be endured, but as complex, significant, and meaningful experience to be explored," Recent research shows that there are a variety of explanations for hearing voices, with many people beginning to hear voices as a response to extreme stress or trauma.

Unforbidden Pleasures

Adam Phillips in conversation with Deborah Levy

     

Unforbidden Pleasures is the dazzling new book from Adam Phillips, author of Missing Out and Going Sane.

Adam Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the Unforbidden, from the fall of our 'first parents' Adam and Eve to the work of the great twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinkers.

Unforbidden pleasures, he argues, are always the ones we tend not to think about, yet when you look into it, it is probable that we get as much pleasure, if not more, from them. And we may have underestimated just how restricted our restrictiveness, in thrall to the forbidden and its rules, may make us.

Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of several previous books, all widely acclaimed, including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Going Sane and Side Effects. His most recent books are On Kindness, co-written with the historian Barbara Taylor, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, On Balance and One Way and Another.

‘Every mind-blowing book from Adam Phillips suspends all the certainties we are most attached to and somehow makes this feel exhilarating’ - Deborah Levy

‘Phillips radiates infectious charm. The brew of gaiety, compassion, exuberance and idealism is heady and disarming’ - Sunday Times

‘Phillips is one of the finest prose stylists at work in the language, an Emerson for our time’ - John Banville

Unforbidden Pleasures is published by Hamish Hamilton (5 November 2015)

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including The Unloved, Swallowing Geography, and Beautiful Mutants. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2012 Levy adapted two of Freud's case histories, Dora and The Wolfman for BBC Radio 4. Things I Don’t Want to Know is the title of Levy’s sparkling response to George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I Write’, an autobiographical essay on writing, gender politics and philosophy. Her new novel, Hot Milk, will be published in 2016 by Hamish Hamilton.

Conference: The Unconscious Today 4

Session 4: The Unconscious and the Body

Katerina Fotopoulou - The Embodied Relational Unconscious

The Freudian Unconscious was closely related to the mental representation of the body, and particularly the satisfaction of its biological needs. Katerina Fotopoulou will talk about 'the embodied relational unconscious', discussing certain classical and contemporary psychoanalytic insights on the unconscious that shed light on contemporary clinical and neuro-scientific findings. Among other fascinating things, we will learn about the psychological mechanisms by which body feelings are influenced by internalised social expectations and interactions; how bodies are interpersonally mentalised and perceived to form the basis of ourselves.

Aikaterini (Katerina) Fotopoulou PhD is Senior Lecturer at the Psychoanalysis Unit, Psychology and Language Sciences Division, UCL and Research Affiliate at the UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Her current research projects focus on body feelings, sensorimotor signals and related body representations in healthy individuals and in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders of body awareness; she is interested in psychological and neural mechanisms by which our interoceptive body feelings, as well as multimodal representations of the body, are influenced by internalised social expectations, on-line interactions with other people and by neuropeptides known to enhance social feelings. These studies point to unique neural mechanisms by which our bodies are interpersonally ‘mentalised’ and perceived to form the basis of our selves. Katerina is the Director of the London Neuropsychoanalysis Centre and runs the London Neuropsychoanalysis Group on: ‘Psychodynamic Neuroscience and Neuropsychology’. With Conway and Pfaff, she is co-editor of the volume From the Couch to the Lab: Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience (2012). In 2011, she was awarded the prestigious British Neuropsychological Society’s Early Career Award, The Elizabeth Warrington Prize, as well as the Clifford Yorke Prize (2006) by the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, for Early Career Contributions to the field, and the Papanicolaou Prize in a joined meeting of the World Hellenic Biomedical Society and the Hellenic Medical Society of Britain. Katerina is also finishing her Clinical Doctorate in Counselling and Psychotherapeutic Psychology, accredited by the British Psychological Society and the Health Professions Council and leading to eligibility for Professional Chartership.

Conference: The Unconscious Today 3

Session 3: The Freudian Unconscious Revisited

Salman Akhtar - 14 Proposals in Freud’s ‘The Unconscious'

Salman will revisit some of Freud’s most central claims regarding the nature of the unconscious and examine their current status within and beyond psychoanalysis.

Anouchka Grose - Language and the Unconscious

Anouchka will respond to Salman’s talk from a contemporary Lacanian perspective, with a particular emphasis on the role of the language.

Salman Akhtar MD, is a world-renowned psychoanalyst and psychiatrist and one of the most creative and prolific psychoanalytic writers. He was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Centre of Philadelphia. He has authored, edited or co-edited more than 300 publications including books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis and several collections of poetry. He has delivered many prestigious addresses and lectures and is recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, which include the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Best Paper of the Year Award (1995), the Margaret Mahler Literature Prize (1996), the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians’ Sigmund Freud Award (2000), the American College of Psychoanalysts’ Laughlin Award (2003), the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Edith Sabshin Award (2000), Columbia University’s Robert Leibert Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis (2004), the American Psychiatric Association’s Kun Po Soo Award (2004), Irma Bland Award for being the Outstanding Teacher of Psychiatric Residents in the US (2005), and the Sigourney Award (2012). Dr Akhtar is an internationally sought speaker and teacher, and his books have been translated into many languages. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

Anouchka Grose is a Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, where she regularly lectures. She is the author of No More Silly Love Songs: a Realist’s Guide to Romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy? (Karnac, 2011), and is the editor of 'Hysteria Today', a collection of essays to be published by Karnac later this year. She also writes for The Guardian and teaches at Camberwell School of Art.