Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

Dany Nobus: It's a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards In this paper, I will argue that the controversial issue concerning the truth value of human memories is in itself a false debate. With reference to the reality of the event that is being recalled, memories are always by definition false. In terms of the subjective experience of the one who is remembering, they are always by definition true. Hence, from a psychoanalytic perspective memories are always simultaneously objectively false and subjectively true, and this can be the starting point for a re-evaluation of Freud's significance for contemporary 'scientific' discussions on the substance and function of memory.   Sharon Kivland: Last Year I am trying to remember a film. It is film about the construction of memory (I think), as it might take place during a psychoanalysis, though I have only half an hour today rather than several years. I have watched the film, as I have done many times before, since 1970 in fact; this time, for a week, trying not to fall asleep at the point I have fallen asleep in it for the last forty-three years. Each time I have awoken, I have tried to remember what I saw last, before I slept. This is a film reconstructed through memory. This is a screen memory. In a series of flashbacks, I try to go back to a founding moment – I do not believe this to be true, but it still works.   Alasdair Hopwood: Closing Remarks   These recordings may not be further used or cited without the express permission of the speakers.

Martin Conway: False Memories in the Remembering-Imaging System What do memories represent? At best they represent some fragments derived from our experience of a past event. That ‘experience’ may have intersected with ‘reality’ to some degree. So the fragments preserved in memory derive from our experience of reality, also to some degree. The brain non-consciously and automatically ‘fills in’, by making unconscious inferences, much of the detail of a ‘memory’. Memories are constructed in the remembering-imaging system (RIS), where future events are also imagined, as well alternative pasts. In this paper I consider how errors and false memories can arise in the RIS for past and future events.   Chris French: Memory for Trauma This talk will present an overview of research investigating the nature of memory for traumatic events with a particular focus upon examining the Freudian notion of repression. The idea that the experience of trauma often results in the automatic and involuntary repression of memories into the unconscious mind is critically assessed and the risk that the search for such memories can result in the production of false memories is discussed. These recordings may not be further used or cited without the express permission of the speakers.

Martin Conway: False Memories in the Remembering-Imaging SystemWhat do memories represent? At best they represent some fragments derived from our experience of a past event. That ‘experience’ may have intersected with ‘reality’ to some degree. So the fragments preserved in memory derive from our experience of reality, also to some degree. The brain non-consciously and automatically ‘fills in’, by making unconscious inferences, much of the detail of a ‘memory’. Memories are constructed in the remembering-imaging system (RIS), where future events are also imagined, as well alternative pasts. In this paper I consider how errors and false memories can arise in the RIS for past and future events. Chris French: Memory for TraumaThis talk will present an overview of research investigating the nature of memory for traumatic events with a particular focus upon examining the Freudian notion of repression. The idea that the experience of trauma often results in the automatic and involuntary repression of memories into the unconscious mind is critically assessed and the risk that the search for such memories can result in the production of false memories is discussed.These recordings may not be further used or cited without the express permission of the speakers.

Alasdair Hopwood: Introductory RemarksFiona Gabbert: The Psychology of False MemoryIs it possible to develop a 'memory' for something that was not experienced? Plenty of evidence now exists to suggest that it is possible ...but how does this happen, and can we distinguish false memories from our 'real' memories? This seminar provides an overview of how psychologists investigate the phenomenon of false memories, and what the findings can tell us about how our memories work. The implications of this body of research will also be discussed with reference to real life examples.These recordings may not be further used or cited without the express permission of the speakers.

Alasdair Hopwood: Introductory Remarks Fiona Gabbert: The Psychology of False Memory Is it possible to develop a 'memory' for something that was not experienced? Plenty of evidence now exists to suggest that it is possible ...but how does this happen, and can we distinguish false memories from our 'real' memories? This seminar provides an overview of how psychologists investigate the phenomenon of false memories, and what the findings can tell us about how our memories work. The implications of this body of research will also be discussed with reference to real life examples. These recordings may not be further used or cited without the express permission of the speakers.

Paul Coldwell (University of the Arts London) discusses his work exploring the relations between art, the archive, the uncanny and the museum. With Carol Seigel, Director of the Freud Museum.Artist Paul Coldwell’s work is centred on our relationship to objects and how meanings can be projected onto them. This exhibition is the result of visual research in the archives of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Freud Museum, and engages with notions of anxiety, self-perception, worth and identity.Part of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014.

Paul Coldwell (University of the Arts London) discusses his work exploring the relations between art, the archive, the uncanny and the museum. With Carol Seigel, Director of the Freud Museum. Artist Paul Coldwell’s work is centred on our relationship to objects and how meanings can be projected onto them. This exhibition is the result of visual research in the archives of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Freud Museum, and engages with notions of anxiety, self-perception, worth and identity. Part of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014.

Author's Talk: Roger Kennedy with Josh CohenRoger Kennedy, psychoanalyst, former president of The British Psychoanalytical Society and author of Twelve books including The Many Voices of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2007), discusses his latest publication The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis of Consciousness and the Human Soul (Routledge, 2014) with Josh Cohen, psychoanalyst, Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London and author of the acclaimed The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (Granta, 2013).The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis of Consciousness and the Human Soul develops, from a number of different viewpoints, the significance of home in our lives. Roger Kennedy puts forward the central role of what he has termed a ‘psychic home’ as a vital psychic structure, which gathers together a number of different human functions. Kennedy questions what we mean by the powerfully evocative notion of the human soul, which has important links to the notion of home and he suggests that what makes us human is that we allow a home for the soul.Insightful, enlightening and broad reaching, The Psychic Home brings the concept of the soul centre stage as an entity that is elemental, an essence, irreducible, and what makes us human as subjects of experience. Essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, philosophers and those interested in spirituality and religion.

Author's Talk: Roger Kennedy with Josh Cohen Roger Kennedy, psychoanalyst, former president of The British Psychoanalytical Society and author of Twelve books including The Many Voices of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2007), discusses his latest publication The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis of Consciousness and the Human Soul (Routledge, 2014) with Josh Cohen, psychoanalyst, Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London and author of the acclaimed The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (Granta, 2013). The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis of Consciousness and the Human Soul develops, from a number of different viewpoints, the significance of home in our lives. Roger Kennedy puts forward the central role of what he has termed a ‘psychic home’ as a vital psychic structure, which gathers together a number of different human functions. Kennedy questions what we mean by the powerfully evocative notion of the human soul, which has important links to the notion of home and he suggests that what makes us human is that we allow a home for the soul. Insightful, enlightening and broad reaching, The Psychic Home brings the concept of the soul centre stage as an entity that is elemental, an essence, irreducible, and what makes us human as subjects of experience. Essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, philosophers and those interested in spirituality and religion.

Emily A. Kuriloff During the 1930s and 1940s, European psychoanalysts held fast to their professional identities despite a profoundly destabilizing reality. From Budapest to Paris the Nazis disrupted the work of this group and threatened their very lives. That psychoanalysis endured, and even flourished in postwar Europe and the Americas, is itself remarkable. And yet, in the end, the 20th century belonged as much to Freud as it did to Hitler.In her recent book Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich Emily Kuriloff explores the myriad ways in which theory and praxis – and thus the course of psychoanalysis – has been and continues to be influenced by this history. In tonight’s talk she will focus particularly on the British experience before and after the Second World War.Kuriloff’s work leans heavily on personal interviews conducted with analysts who lived during the period, and who frequented the Freud house in Hampstead, consulting and commiserating with their displaced leader and his daughter and heir apparent, Anna. Their narratives bring an immediacy and nuance to a terrible and auspicious time.Emily A. Kuriloff is a Psychologist and Psychoanalyst. She is in private practice in New York City and she is Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, New York.

Emily A. Kuriloff  During the 1930s and 1940s, European psychoanalysts held fast to their professional identities despite a profoundly destabilizing reality. From Budapest to Paris the Nazis disrupted the work of this group and threatened their very lives. That psychoanalysis endured, and even flourished in postwar Europe and the Americas, is itself remarkable. And yet, in the end, the 20th century belonged as much to Freud as it did to Hitler. In her recent book Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich Emily Kuriloff explores the myriad ways in which theory and praxis – and thus the course of psychoanalysis – has been and continues to be influenced by this history. In tonight’s talk she will focus particularly on the British experience before and after the Second World War. Kuriloff’s work leans heavily on personal interviews conducted with analysts who lived during the period, and who frequented the Freud house in Hampstead, consulting and commiserating with their displaced leader and his daughter and heir apparent, Anna. Their narratives bring an immediacy and nuance to a terrible and auspicious time. Emily A. Kuriloff is a Psychologist and Psychoanalyst. She is in private practice in New York City and she is Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, New York.

Lisa Appignanesi in Conversation with Dany NobusIn her latest book - Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness (Virago/Little Brown) - Lisa Appignanesi takes us into the theatre of the courtroom to witness the fascinating interplay between the law, which presupposes a person in the dock fully in charge of acts and understanding, the accused who may be derailed by passion or trapped in a delusional system, and judge, jury and the psychiatrists whose expertise as witnesses was founded on a knowledge of extreme emotion.  She discusses crimes of passion and the rise of the forensic psychiatrist with Dany Nobus, psychoanalyst and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University.

Lisa Appignanesi in Conversation with Dany Nobus In her latest book - Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness (Virago/Little Brown) - Lisa Appignanesi takes us into the theatre of the courtroom to witness the fascinating interplay between the law, which presupposes a person in the dock fully in charge of acts and understanding, the accused who may be derailed by passion or trapped in a delusional system, and judge, jury and the psychiatrists whose expertise as witnesses was founded on a knowledge of extreme emotion.  She discusses crimes of passion and the rise of the forensic psychiatrist with Dany Nobus, psychoanalyst and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University.

Volker M. Welter Freud. The name is synonymous with psychoanalysis. Lesser known, however, is Ernst Freud, the architect son of Sigmund who designed modern homes for mainly bourgeois clients. Freud attended Adolf Loos’s private Bauschule in Vienna, practiced in Berlin after the Great War, and, from 1933 onwards, in London. The talk will focus on Freud’s modern architecture in London, which will be compared with examples from his time in Berlin. The talk will also present Ernst Freud’s designs of psychoanalytic consulting rooms and couches; the son of the founder of psychoanalysis was one of the first architects to design this type of professional space.Volker M. Welter is an architectural historian who has lived, studied, and worked in Germany, Scotland, and England, and is now a Professor for Californian and European modern architectural history and theory at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California at Santa Barbara. His publications include Biopolis—Patrick Geddes and the City of Life (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2002), Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (Oxford/New York: Berghahn, 2012). He is currently working on a book entitled Tremaine Houses: A Study in mid-twentieth-century Patronage of Modern American Architecture.

Volker M. Welter  Freud. The name is synonymous with psychoanalysis. Lesser known, however, is Ernst Freud, the architect son of Sigmund who designed modern homes for mainly bourgeois clients. Freud attended Adolf Loos’s private Bauschule in Vienna, practiced in Berlin after the Great War, and, from 1933 onwards, in London. The talk will focus on Freud’s modern architecture in London, which will be compared with examples from his time in Berlin. The talk will also present Ernst Freud’s designs of psychoanalytic consulting rooms and couches; the son of the founder of psychoanalysis was one of the first architects to design this type of professional space. Volker M. Welter is an architectural historian who has lived, studied, and worked in Germany, Scotland, and England, and is now a Professor for Californian and European modern architectural history and theory at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California at Santa Barbara. His publications include Biopolis—Patrick Geddes and the City of Life (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2002), Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (Oxford/New York: Berghahn, 2012). He is currently working on a book entitled Tremaine Houses: A Study in mid-twentieth-century Patronage of Modern American Architecture.