Save the Date: OCTOBER 30, 2013
JUDITH EDWARDS, LONDON TAVISTOCK CHILD ANALYST & AUTHOR
27 Rue de Fleurus, a Salon Meeting
of the Contemporary Freudian Society
“Memory, Memoir, and the Practitioner: Pieces of Ourselves” selective readings from Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life by Judith Gurney
Wednesday, October 30th, 8:00 B 9:30pm (upper west side location to be announced)
As Walt Whitman said: “we are large, we contain multitudes—we contradict ourselves.” We need the help of our significant others, including the child we once were, to make sense of the world into which we are born; then learning about the self both conscious and unconscious throughout life. This is why our patients come to us. They live in the midst of generational events, as do we all. The purpose of our discussion & exchange of ideas tonight will be to look at the ‘pieces’ of one small girl, as she journeys through the inevitable conflicts of childhood, common for both our patients and ourselves. In ‘Creative Writers and Daydreaming’ (1908) Freud considers that a writer uses aesthetic form in order to allow readers to view their own daydreams and memories through the lens of the writer’s creative work ‘without any self reproach or shame’. So it becomes a shared enterprise, melding reader and writer at a subconscious level.
“Perhaps she should be allowed a little of her own voice? Will the ‘I’ tell us something different? She is struggling and straining, tapping and moaning a bit, wanting to get out of that constraining box. You can see part of an eye staring angrily through the tantalizing fragment between the side and the top of the well-made prison.”
British Reviews:
“It must have been an extraordinary experience for the author to rework such profound events in writing. This process of thinking over one’s life takes a life-time-however intensely it was lived at the time, it seems to me.”
Margaret Rustin, Head of Service, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic
‘This is a new kind of memoir. The author has an extraordinary capacity to combine the inward, phantasising mind of the infant and growing child, with the larger world around it. There is brilliance in the way that this feat is achieved; the narrative darts to and fro, from self to world and vice versa, like a small fish through an opening in a coral reef. The prose is lyrical and poetic. The book stands out from other contemporary writings.’”
Dr Meira Likierman, psychoanalyst and writer, author of Melanie Klein Today
Dr. Judith Edwards is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist teaching and supervising on various courses at the Tavistock Clinic, London, where she is also course tutor for the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies for non-clinical students. Apart from publishing papers in academic journals internationally, she has contributed to many books including most recently The Emotional Experience of Adoption (Hindle and Shulman, Routledge, 2008) and (Acquainted with the Night: Psychoanalysis and the Poetic Imagination (Canham and Satyamurti, Karnac, 2003). She also conceived and edited Being Alive (Routledge, 2001) on the work of Anne Alvarez. She was joint editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy from 1996 to 2000, and has edited numerous books on psychoanalytic subjects, including Live Company ( Alvarez 1992, Routledge), Arctic Spring: Potential for Growth in Adults with Psychosis and Autism (Tremelloni 2005, Karnac) ‚Psychotherapy with Young People in Care: Lost and Found (Hunter 2001, Brunner-Routledge) , and Intellectual Disability, Trauma and Psychotherapy (Edited Cottis, 2009, Routledge).
In 2010 she won the Jan Lee Memorial Prize for a paper linking psychoanalysis and the arts. (judith@judithedwards.co.uk)
Nancy Cromer Grayson and Debra Gill, Co-Chairs, Susan N. Finkelstein, Moderator
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this meeting, participants will be able to:
1. Identify the manifestation of the childhood self in adulthood and how this can contribute to adaptation to new developmental phases.
2. Identify how to help adults learn about their own histories and the impact of their conscious and unconscious choices.
Who Should Attend:
This program is open to members and candidates of all psychoanalytic institutes.
Important Disclosure Information: None of the planners and presenters of this CE program have any relevant financial relationships to disclose.
RSVP to susanfcsw@aol.com
We look forward to a lively discussion and an opportunity to enjoy the company of our members and candidates.