Another important strand that runs through the series is a critical appraisal of the various sets of ideas. So attention is given to the construction of theory and the inter-relatedness of ideas as much as to any individual set of ideas. As well as asking questions like, what is psychoanalytic truth and knowledge, we look at how people lay claim to knowing truth, and how the battles can be as much for peoples' hearts as for their minds. However, we remain primarily interested not just in the content of the various schools of thought, but in how the struggles over knowledge took place. We explore not just the scientific ideas that were put forward by the different parties but examine also the political, social, historical, administrative and personal aspects of the debate, on the premise that you can only understand something properly if you place it in its total context.Īs we progress through the series we cover the history of psychoanalytic ideas presenting the part played by Sigmund Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Michael Balint, John Bowlby, Wilfred Bion and others. Our starting point was the British Controversial Discussions. But discussions of a controversial nature have been a feature of psychoanalysis since it was founded, and our contention is that if psychoanalysis ever ceases to be controversial that it will have ceased to be a viable force in people's lives. 'The Controversial Discussions' was a name given to a series of meetings held in the British Psychoanalytical Society in London in the 1940's. John McGahern added that a book is a coffin of words it is the reader who breathes it to life.Ī series of 10 lectures by John McClean and Maurice Whelan James Joyce said a piano was a coffin of music that needed a pianist to play it to life. In advancing his ideas he will draw on his own prose and poetry and on two Irish writers, the poet Seamus Heaney, and the novelist John McGahern. He poses questions: How does a writer take ordinary events and from them make an extraordinary story? Where is transformational energy to be found? Maurice views writing a novel or a poem as an act of personal expression and social communication – a writer must always have a reader in mind. He argues for a full engagement with everyday emotional experience. He explains how a creative mind is nourished and protected. He is interested in the mind of the writer and in the creativity that is necessary to live a life. In this talk Maurice Whelan novelist, poet, and psychoanalyst, examines the creative mind.

If you can’t hear the silence you are not listening to the words

Dr najeeb lectures panel