Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

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).

Author's talk: Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten introduced by Professor Brett Kahr Karl Abraham: Life and Work, a Biography is the first complete biography of Karl Abraham (1877-1925), a close colleague and friend of Sigmund Freud and one of the most important pioneers of psychoanalysis. Join us for a drinks reception launching the publication, followed by a talk by the author, Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten introduced by Professor Brett Kahr. This event is kindly supported by The Embassy of the Netherlands. Abraham was the first psychoanalyst in Germany, where he brought about a great flourishing of psychoanalysis. His clinical-theoretical contributions quickly became classics that have powerfully influenced the development of psychoanalytic theory. He was the first to develop a psychoanalytic theory of depression, several years before the publication of Freud’s 'Mourning and Melancholia'. Abraham was both supervisor and analyst to Melanie Klein, on whose theoretical work he had a profound influence. In the 1920s Abraham was the most important analyst of the psychoanalytic movement after Freud. He was president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, president of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, and a member of the "secret committee". He was involved in a number of major conflicts of the early years of psychoanalysis, and after his death he was quite often blamed for them. As a consequence, Abraham, so highly valued during his life, was frequently reviled after his death. Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Amsterdam. She is a member of the Dutch Psychoanalytic Group, the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society and the IPA, and President of the Board of the Dutch Journal of Psychoanalysis. She specializes in the early history of psychoanalysis, with a special focus on Freud and the secret committee. She has conducted extensive research on Karl Abraham and the role of the secret committee in the development of psychoanalytic theory. 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 London and of Freud Museum Publications.

Author's talk: Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten introduced by Professor Brett KahrKarl Abraham: Life and Work, a Biography is the first complete biography of Karl Abraham (1877-1925), a close colleague and friend of Sigmund Freud and one of the most important pioneers of psychoanalysis. Join us for a drinks reception launching the publication, followed by a talk by the author, Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten introduced by Professor Brett Kahr.This event is kindly supported by The Embassy of the Netherlands.Abraham was the first psychoanalyst in Germany, where he brought about a great flourishing of psychoanalysis. His clinical-theoretical contributions quickly became classics that have powerfully influenced the development of psychoanalytic theory. He was the first to develop a psychoanalytic theory of depression, several years before the publication of Freud’s 'Mourning and Melancholia'. Abraham was both supervisor and analyst to Melanie Klein, on whose theoretical work he had a profound influence.In the 1920s Abraham was the most important analyst of the psychoanalytic movement after Freud. He was president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, president of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, and a member of the "secret committee". He was involved in a number of major conflicts of the early years of psychoanalysis, and after his death he was quite often blamed for them. As a consequence, Abraham, so highly valued during his life, was frequently reviled after his death.Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Amsterdam. She is a member of the Dutch Psychoanalytic Group, the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society and the IPA, and President of the Board of the Dutch Journal of Psychoanalysis. She specializes in the early history of psychoanalysis, with a special focus on Freud and the secret committee. She has conducted extensive research on Karl Abraham and the role of the secret committee in the development of psychoanalytic theory.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 London and of Freud Museum Publications.

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 WittgensteinGavin 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.

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.

A joint event between the Freud Museum London and the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF) What is a successful biography? How can inner lives of others be satisfactorily explored and explained? Join a panel of writers looking at the fascinating process of writing biography using psychoanalytic thinking to understand psychoanalysts. Three authors, two of them psychotherapists, will discuss with professional biographer Frances Spalding the differences between analysis and writing biography, both practices which try to make sense of individual lives. The discussion will be chaired by Frances Spalding, who has written acclaimed biographies of Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Gwen Raverat, among others. The speakers and their subjects are Marion Bower on Joan Riviere, Dee McQuillan on James Strachey, and Emma Letley on Marion Milner. Speaker Details: Marion Bower is a BPC registered adult psychotherapist in private practice. She previously worked as a Consultant Social Worker at the Tavistock clinic. She has edited a book on ‘Psychoanalytic theory for social work practice’ (Routledge) and has co-edited ‘Addictive states of Mind’ (Karnac). She is writing a biography of Joan Riviere. Tall brilliant and beautiful, Joan Riviere (1882-1962) was a patient of Freud and his favourite translator. She also wrote ground breaking papers on female sexuality and patients who respond to getting better by getting worse. She was a highly respected psychoanalyst and her patients included Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby. Joan was a close friend and colleague of Melanie Klein and a brilliant expositor of Klein’s ideas, some of which she anticipated in her own work. At 17 she spent a year in Gotha where she learned fluent German, which she later used to translate Freud’s writings. On her return she engaged in a whirl of balls and dances and met her husband to be, Evelyn Riviere, a barrister. Her parents arranged for her to be apprenticed to the dressmaker of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving where she was able to indulge her passionate interest in clothes. Joan’s aunt Margaret Verrall, who was one of the first lecturers in classics at Newnham College Cambridge, introduced her to the society for Psychical Research which is where she first encountered psychoanalytic ideas. A depressive breakdown led to her going into analysis with Ernest Jones who sent her some of her first patients. Dr Emma Letley is a writer and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. After more than 20 years as a lecturer in Literature, she trained with the Arbours Association, works in private practice in London and, for many years, at King’s College London. Her publications include a study of 19th Century Scots Literature and a biography of Maurice Baring. Her biography of Milner, Marion Milner: The Life was published by Routledge in 2013 and she is Series Editor of the newly-issued works of Milner (Routledge 2012-1010). She is also on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy. Emma Letley discusses Milner as a biographical subject, her influence on the author’s own clinical work, and Milner’s own contributions to creativity. As biographical companion, an artist, psychoanalyst and educationalist, whose life spanned the whole of the twentieth century, Milner brings with her ‘the riches of world culture’. Milner’s contributions to creativity focus on her great book On Not Being Able to Paint, a book as relevant today as it was in the year of its publication (1950). Dee McQuillan is a mature student with a background in features writing and editing. Her first degree was history, some time ago in both senses. She is a voluntary mental health worker, has an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies and is in the third year of PhD study at the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London researching James Strachey's life and work. James Strachey was the youngest of an upper middle cla

A joint event between the Freud Museum London and the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF)What is a successful biography? How can inner lives of others be satisfactorily explored and explained? Join a panel of writers looking at the fascinating process of writing biography using psychoanalytic thinking to understand psychoanalysts. Three authors, two of them psychotherapists, will discuss with professional biographer Frances Spalding the differences between analysis and writing biography, both practices which try to make sense of individual lives.The discussion will be chaired by Frances Spalding, who has written acclaimed biographies of Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Gwen Raverat, among others. The speakers and their subjects are Marion Bower on Joan Riviere, Dee McQuillan on James Strachey, and Emma Letley on Marion Milner.Speaker Details:Marion Bower is a BPC registered adult psychotherapist in private practice. She previously worked as a Consultant Social Worker at the Tavistock clinic. She has edited a book on ‘Psychoanalytic theory for social work practice’ (Routledge) and has co-edited ‘Addictive states of Mind’ (Karnac). She is writing a biography of Joan Riviere.Tall brilliant and beautiful, Joan Riviere (1882-1962) was a patient of Freud and his favourite translator. She also wrote ground breaking papers on female sexuality and patients who respond to getting better by getting worse. She was a highly respected psychoanalyst and her patients included Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby. Joan was a close friend and colleague of Melanie Klein and a brilliant expositor of Klein’s ideas, some of which she anticipated in her own work.At 17 she spent a year in Gotha where she learned fluent German, which she later used to translate Freud’s writings. On her return she engaged in a whirl of balls and dances and met her husband to be, Evelyn Riviere, a barrister. Her parents arranged for her to be apprenticed to the dressmaker of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving where she was able to indulge her passionate interest in clothes. Joan’s aunt Margaret Verrall, who was one of the first lecturers in classics at Newnham College Cambridge, introduced her to the society for Psychical Research which is where she first encountered psychoanalytic ideas. A depressive breakdown led to her going into analysis with Ernest Jones who sent her some of her first patients.Dr Emma Letley is a writer and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. After more than 20 years as a lecturer in Literature, she trained with the Arbours Association, works in private practice in London and, for many years, at King’s College London. Her publications include a study of 19th Century Scots Literature and a biography of Maurice Baring. Her biography of Milner, Marion Milner: The Life was published by Routledge in 2013 and she is Series Editor of the newly-issued works of Milner (Routledge 2012-1010). She is also on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy.Emma Letley discusses Milner as a biographical subject, her influence on the author’s own clinical work, and Milner’s own contributions to creativity. As biographical companion, an artist, psychoanalyst and educationalist, whose life spanned the whole of the twentieth century, Milner brings with her ‘the riches of world culture’. Milner’s contributions to creativity focus on her great book On Not Being Able to Paint, a book as relevant today as it was in the year of its publication (1950).Dee McQuillan is a mature student with a background in features writing and editing. Her first degree was history, some time ago in both senses. She is a voluntary mental health worker, has an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies and is in the third year of PhD study at the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London researching James Strachey's life and work.James Strachey was the youngest of an upper middle class family of ten children that included the writer and essayist Lytton Strachey, and was one of the original Bloomsbury set. Strachey is now mostly known as the editor and, with his wife Alix Strachey, main translator of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Freud, but he was a distinguished and busy psychoanalyst from 1928 until around 1946. He lived and worked in Gordon Square, London WC1 and gave lectures in technique and supervision to trainee analysts at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. As DW Winnicott said in an obituary, James Strachey was a very cultured and very shy man.Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. She read art history at the University of Nottingham and began writing journalism and books while still a post-graduate. In the late 1970s and 1980s she wrote extensively on twentieth-century British art, at the same time developing an interest in biography. Her reputation was established with Roger Fry: Art and Life in 1980 and she went on to write lives of the artists Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant and Gwen Raverat, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith.Her survey history, British Art since 1900, in the Thames & Hudson World of Art series has been much used in schools, colleges and universities, and in the mid-1990s she was commissioned by Tate to write a centenary history of this national institution. In 2000 she joined Newcastle University where she is now Professor of Art History. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and in 2005 was made a Companion of the British Empire for Services to Literature.

Part 5: Joseph Calabrese - Therapeutic Emplotment in the Native American ChurchIn this talk, I will outline my analysis of the Native American peyote ritual, which involves a dialectic between therapeutic symbolism and the use of the psychedelic peyote cactus within an alternative semiotic-reflexive paradigm of psychopharmacology. I will discuss the design features of the ritual intervention as well as examples of healing experiences, which demonstrate the ways in which therapeutic efficacy is embedded in ritual symbols and cultural mythology, generating healing transformations and enduring insights. Joseph Calabrese is Reader of Medical Anthropology at University College London. He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago, training in anthropology and clinical psychology, with two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School in Clinical Psychology and Medical Anthropology. He was also the Cannon Fellow in Patient Experience and Health Policy at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He is author of A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church (2013).Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings?This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body.Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields.This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 5: Joseph Calabrese - Therapeutic Emplotment in the Native American Church In this talk, I will outline my analysis of the Native American peyote ritual, which involves a dialectic between therapeutic symbolism and the use of the psychedelic peyote cactus within an alternative semiotic-reflexive paradigm of psychopharmacology. I will discuss the design features of the ritual intervention as well as examples of healing experiences, which demonstrate the ways in which therapeutic efficacy is embedded in ritual symbols and cultural mythology, generating healing transformations and enduring insights.  Joseph Calabrese is Reader of Medical Anthropology at University College London. He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago, training in anthropology and clinical psychology, with two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School in Clinical Psychology and Medical Anthropology. He was also the Cannon Fellow in Patient Experience and Health Policy at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He is author of A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church (2013). Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings? This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body. Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields. This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 4: Darian Leader - Symbol and Symbolic FunctionThis talk will explore some common misconceptions about symbolism, and discuss aspects of the formation of symbols and the establishment of the symbolic function.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)Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings?This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body.Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields.This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 4: Darian Leader - Symbol and Symbolic Function This talk will explore some common misconceptions about symbolism, and discuss aspects of the formation of symbols and the establishment of the symbolic function. 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) Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings? This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body. Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields. This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 3: Boris Wiseman - Symbolic efficacy: From Ritual to Psychoanalysis and Back AgainIn this paper I will address the question of the efficacy of symbols by exploring some echoes between ritual and psychoanalytic practices. I will start by examining Lévi-Strauss’s seductive theory of symbolic efficacy and will then turn to a contemporary anthropological revision of that theory by Carlo Severi (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale) and its psychoanalytic resonances. I will conclude by turning the lens of anthropology onto psychoanalysis and by asking what Amerindian ritual practices may tell us about the talking cure.Boris Wiseman is Associate Professor at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen. He is the author of several books, including Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics (2007), and edited The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss (2009).Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings?This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body.Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields.This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 3: Boris Wiseman - Symbolic efficacy: From Ritual to Psychoanalysis and Back Again In this paper I will address the question of the efficacy of symbols by exploring some echoes between ritual and psychoanalytic practices. I will start by examining Lévi-Strauss’s seductive theory of symbolic efficacy and will then turn to a contemporary anthropological revision of that theory by Carlo Severi (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale) and its psychoanalytic resonances. I will conclude by turning the lens of anthropology onto psychoanalysis and by asking what Amerindian ritual practices may tell us about the talking cure. Boris Wiseman is Associate Professor at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen. He is the author of several books, including Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics (2007), and edited The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss (2009). Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings? This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body. Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields. This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 2: Henrietta Moore - Exclusion, Unsustainability and the Determinations of the SymbolicThis paper discusses the difficulties of adhering to Lévi-Strauss’s view of the symbolic and his account of the effectiveness of symbols. It uses material from Papua New Guinea and China to explore the relationship between desire and ethics as a means of exploring some contemporary problems in articulating the relationship between the psyche and the social.Henrietta Moore is the founding Director of the new Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London where she also holds the Chair of Philosophy, Culture and Design. She is an internationally renowned social anthropologist who has written extensively on the interrelation between material and symbolic gender systems, embodiment and subjectivity. She is the author of several books, including The Subject of Anthropology (2007), a cutting-edge analysis of gendered subjectivity and a ground-breaking contribution to the debates between anthropology and psychoanalysis.Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings?This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body.Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields.This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.

Part 2: Henrietta Moore - Exclusion, Unsustainability and the Determinations of the Symbolic This paper discusses the difficulties of adhering to Lévi-Strauss’s view of the symbolic and his account of the effectiveness of symbols. It uses material from Papua New Guinea and China to explore the relationship between desire and ethics as a means of exploring some contemporary problems in articulating the relationship between the psyche and the social. Henrietta Moore is the founding Director of the new Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London where she also holds the Chair of Philosophy, Culture and Design. She is an internationally renowned social anthropologist who has written extensively on the interrelation between material and symbolic gender systems, embodiment and subjectivity. She is the author of several books, including The Subject of Anthropology (2007), a cutting-edge analysis of gendered subjectivity and a ground-breaking contribution to the debates between anthropology and psychoanalysis. Why do symbols have such a powerful influence on human beings? This question lies at the heart of both psychoanalysis and anthropology. In his seminal paper ‘The Effectiveness of Symbols’, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss compared the healing practices of shamans and psychoanalysts in terms of the structuring effects of symbol and language on the body. Lévi-Strauss opened up new ways of thinking about the symbolic dimension of human life, offering a subtle reformulation of the Freudian unconscious and putting forward a theory of symbolic function that continues to resonate within both fields. This conference brings together eminent speakers from the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology to reflect on Lévi-Strauss’ paper and its influence, and to discuss symbolic effectiveness in their own research and practice.