Between Hours/Interdisciplinary Dialogues, Applied Psychoanalysis Programme of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society presents:
FREE public talks on psychoanalytic ideas with an open discussion about their impact on our lives today.
The Freud Café
Shakespeare’s Prefiguring of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Reverie: The Dream within the Dream
Saturday, May 13, 2023: 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm (ET)
** DISTANCE PARTICIPATION: This free event is available via Zoom only.
Preregistration is required. Please RSVP via email at psychoanalyst@bellnet.ca. Please note that registration closes one week prior to the event.
Shakespeare’s infinitely interpretable writing attests to the breath of his extraordinary grasp of the condition of being human. With his depiction of the dream within the dream, might he already have had his finger on the pulse of the unconscious? And do we discover within the depths of his dramatic characters the heart of psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis in turn is drawn upon to apply its interpretive skills to the plays, while the plays themselves invite a kind of psychological engagement that ‘reads’ both actor and audience. Perhaps such infinitely regressive intertwining reveals something of the unconscious at play both on stage and within a psychoanalytic session.
How might the creativity of Shakespeare’s literary genius inform psychoanalytic understanding and what does psychoanalysis — the theory of the unconscious — have to offer the playwright or reader in re-discovering meaning through immersion in the plays?
Join us for a rich dialogue on these themes from various vantage points with our multidisciplinary panel:
Meg Harris Williams, writer, literary critic and artist, has published widely on the relation between psychoanalysis, aesthetics and literature. She teaches internationally and is visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic, London and an honorary member of the Psychoanalytic Center of California. Her latest book is ‘Dream Sequences in Shakespeare.’
Colleen Murphy, playwright and librettist, a two-time recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, has been Playwright- in-Residence at Finborough Theatre in London UK, Factory Theatre in Toronto, and at numerous universities across Canada. She teaches playwrighting at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
With Vivienne Pasieka, psychoanalyst, moderating.
Previous Presentations from The Freud Café
September 8, 2022 – Propaganda and the Lies We Tell Ourselves
March 5, 2022 – A Freud Café Dialogue in an Age of Bewilderment
October 29, 2021 – The Freud Café Fright Night – “And Things That Go Bump in the Night…” (& why we love them)
April 7, 2021 – Why the Couch? Psychoanalysis: From Freud to the Digital Age
April 12, 2017 – Hold Me: In Mind & in Reality
March 27, 2017 – Love, Relationships and Gender in the Times of Social Media
January 30, 2017 – In the Beginning was the Name: The Language of the Unconscious
November 23, 2016 – Psychoanalysis and Mysticism: Friends or Foes?
September 12, 2016 – The Traumatic Loneliness of Children
June 1, 2016 – Why do we Need to Remember our Dreams?
May 2, 2016 – Coupling: A psychoanalytic point of view
March 21, 2016 – The Psychology of Sport / The Psychoanalysis of Hockey
September 28, 2015 – Of Human Bondage and Jokes
May 21, 2015 – Whose unconscious is it anyway? – A user’s guide, from Freud to more recent ideas about the unconscious
March 19, 2015 – Sibling Rivalry in Jane Austen’s Fiction, a psychoanalytic reading
January 29, 2015 – Hostile and Malignant Prejudice: Or Why it May be Easier to Hate Your Neighbour
November 13, 2014 – On Guilt and Conscience: Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents — A Kleinian Re-View
September 23, 2014 – Oedipus, Aristotle and Freud
May 22, 2014 – Freud and Plato: Plato’s Anticipations of Freud’s Psychology of Dreams in the Republic
For more information about and for registration in the tps&i Extension Programs, Scientific Meetings, Training Programs, Study and Supervision groups and Special Presentations, please visit our website: torontopsychoanalysis.com or email info@torontopsychoanalysis.com