Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis
Thursday 3rd September
2.00-4.00 Freud’s thought
Narcissus and Narcissism: A Classical Myth and its Influence on the Controversy between
Freud and Jung – David Engels, Université Libre de Bruxelles (30 mins)
Freudian Psychoanalysis and Narcissistic Readings of Classical Mythology – Dan Orrells,
University of Warwick (30 mins)
Freud’s Empedokles: A Case History of “Cryptamnesia” – Bruce King, Swarthmore College
(30 mins)
4.30-5.45 Freud’s Vergil
Juno and the Symptom – Jeff Rodman, Independent Scholar (25 mins)
Freud’s Vergil – Gregory Staley, University of Maryland (25 mins)
8-9.30 Keynote address
The Place of Allegory in Philosophy: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Plato's Cave – Jonathan
Lear, University of Chicago
Friday 4th September
9.00-10.15 Prometheus and Pandora
The Image of Prometheus, the Shadow of the Future – Ric Rader, Ohio State University (25
mins)
Pandora's Jar, Psyche's Box and the Space of the Unconscious – Vered Lev Kenaan, University
of Haifa (25 mins)
10.45-12.15 Ovid
Sight and Transgression: Ideas of the Ovidian Gaze – Oliver Harris, The London Consortium,
Birkbeck (35 mins)
The Anatomy of Melancholy: Loss, Ethics, Marriage and Juno in Ovid’s Metamorphoses –
Micaela Janan, Duke University (35 mins)
12.30-1.15 Myth, Religion, Illusion: How Freud Got his Fire Back – Richard Armstrong,
University of Houston (35 mins)
2.15-3.45 Keynote address
Listening, Counter-Transference, and the Classicist as 'Subject-Supposed-to-Know' – Page
DuBois, University of California, San Diego
4-5.30 Gods
The Olympian Gods in Homer and in Ovid: Evidence of the Collectively Cultural Superego
and the Individually Idealized Selfobject – Shubha Pathak, American University (20
mins)
Motivated by the Gods: On Psychoanalyzing Ancient Tragedy – Constantine Sandis, Oxford
Brookes University (20 mins)
Obeying Your Father: Stoic Theology between Myth and Reason – Kurt Lampe, University of
Bristol (20 mins)
Evening Reception in the Freud Museum 7.00-8.30
Saturday 5th September
9.30-11.00 The Family Romance
Brothers in Arms: Oedipus and Cain – Jens De Vleminck, Catholic University Leuven (35
mins)
The Shadow of the Mother: Oedipus and the Murderous Mothers of Greek Myth – Beverley
Clack, Oxford Brookes University (30 mins)
11.15-12.00 Mythology and the Abject in Imperial Satire – Paul Allen Miller, University of
South Carolina (35 mins)
12.15-1.00 Myths of Creation and Myths of Perfection in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – Bennett
Simon, Harvard Medical School
2.15-3.45 Liminality
Homelessness, dangerousness, disorder and the cycle of rejection: a Cynical analysis?’ –
John Adlam, Henderson Hospital & Christopher Scanlon, University of the West of
England (25 mins)
States of Consciousness and Practices of Forgiving from Homer to Post-Apartheid South
Africa – Jill Scott, Queen’s University (25 mins)
Aristophanes’ Myth of Eros in Plato’s Symposium: a Split Perspective? – Marcia Dobson &
John Riker, Colorado College (25 mins)
4-4.45 The Myth of Virtue in Valerius Maximus, or Did the Romans Believe in their
Exempla? – Erik Gunderson, University of Toronto (35 mins)
5-6.30 Authority
Creon: The Figure of Authority – Seamus MacSuibhne, University College Dublin (35 mins)
The mythic foundation of law – Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto (35 mins)
7.45-9.30 Keynote address:
From Classical myth to personal cosmology: Jung’s ‘confrontation with the unconscious’
– Sonu Shamdasani, Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London
Sunday 6th September
9.15-11 Keynote address
Freud, Jung, and Winnicott on Hero Myths – Robert Segal, University of Aberdeen
Response – Meg Harris Williams, author of The Vale of Soulmaking and The Aesthetic
Development in Psychoanalytic Thinking
11.15-12.45 Literary History
Literary history and poetic childhood – Mark Payne, University of Chicago (35 mins)
Our Confiscated Gods: Classical Myth in the Theories of Northrop Frye – Glen Gill,
Montclair State University (35 mins)
12.45-2.00 informal lunch and round table discussion