A Century of the Uncanny

January 25, 2020January 9, 2020Sharadha

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 25/01/2020
9:00 am - 5:00 pm

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Day Conference organised by The Freud Museum, London

Saturday, 25 January 2020

It is related to dread, horror, repulsion and distress. But what is the uncanny and why is it so significant today?

Freud’s investigation into the uncanny has been influential in literature, film, art and philosophy. It can also help us think about political culture and the therapeutic situation itself.

This multi-disciplinary conference investigates Freud’s infuriatingly complex and contradictory paper and asks how it can help us understand contemporary dilemmas in art, culture, politics and psychotherapy.

Speakers and topics include:

Gregorio Kohon: The Uncanny: Psychoanalysis and the Aesthetic Experience – The Compulsion to Repeat

Forbes Marlock: Ghost Writing

Nicholas Royle: Dream Freud

Martin Bladh and Karolina Urbaniak: Screening of the animated film, ‘The Sandmann’

Agnieszka Piotrowska: Film, Object, and the Horror of a Doppelgänger

Alexandra Kokoli: A Footnote on Nightmares: Feminism and the Uncanny

June Campbell: There’s No Place Like Home

Carol Leader: The Theatre of the Uncanny: Notes from the Consulting Room

For more information on the conference programme, click here.

ONLINE SQUIGGLE STUDY GROUP FOR 2022

Winnicott lived in an era that saw two world wars, genocide and later, the threat of nuclear holocaust. Writing in 1950, reflecting on the likelihood of individuals being able to see beyond their own national geographical boundaries and to espouse agendas without frontiers, Winnicott adopted a pessimistic tone: “It is not possible for persons to get further in society-building than they can get with their own personal development. For these reasons, we regard with suspicion the use of terms like ‘world-citizenship’. Perhaps only a few really great and fairly aged men and women ever get as far in their own development as to be justified in thinking in such wide terms.”

Is climate change, with the possible threat of eventual extinction, comparable? Is the threat at another level or in a totally different category to 20th century events? Is it within human capability to build a society that can simultaneously maintain the facilitating physical environment required to survive and rise to the challenges of personal, interpersonal and social development?

This Squiggle study group is being established to explore the contribution which Winnicott’s ideas might make to our understanding of the implications and responses to the crisis of climate change.

It will run throughout 2022 and is open to everybody with an interest in the subject. Participants from all countries will be warmly welcomed.

Participation is free.

Tickets available via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/winnicotts-ideas-and-the-climate-crisis-online-study-group-for-2022-tickets-235383958757?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch&keep_tld=1

Meetings will be via Zoom for an hour-and-a-half on a Monday from 19.30-21.00 GMT, three times a term for a year to discuss aspects of a relevant paper by Winnicott in the light of climate change. Clinical examples would be welcome.

The sessions will be convened by two Trustees of the Squiggle Foundation.

Participants can join individual or multiple sessions.