Mourning and Melancholia

Life in the Face of Loss

A conference to celebrate the centenary of Freud’s groundbreaking work ‘Mourning and Melancholia’

'Mourning and Melancholia' introduced new ways of thinking about the structure of the mind, our relationships to others and how we process the experience of loss. For many people this is the book that inaugurated 'modern' psychoanalysis.

This conference brings together psychoanalysts, academics, writers and performers to consider how we keep going in the face of grief, and why we sometimes fail.

Speakers:

Ken Robinson (psychoanalyst) (biog)
‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?': King Lear and The Last Laugh (abstract)

Jonathan Sklar (psychoanalyst) (biog)
Thinking on the Border - Memory and the Trauma in Society (abstract)

Deborah Levy (writer) (biog)
in conversation with Katie Lewis (psychotherapist) (biog) (abstract)

Alison Lee (psychoanalytic psychotherapist) (biog)
The Unlived Life (abstract)

Ruth McCall (psychoanalyst) (biog)
The Joy of Melancholia (abstract)

Caroline Bainbridge (author and lecturer) (biog)
On the Experience of a Melancholic Gaze (abstract)

Performers:
Poets, artists and theatre makers will participate with short pieces dealing with loss, grief and mourning.