The Screening Room, Weymouth House, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus 1-4pm.

According to The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, paranoia has individual and institutional, social and cultural forms and determinants. There is probably at least a germ of paranoia in everyone, which may be activated in regressive states with increased vulnerability. Clinically, paranoia may be found in mild transient forms, paranoid states of varying degree and duration, fixed paranoid traits and paranoid character, and borderline schizophrenia. The range of paranoid conditions doubtless depends upon constitutional, characterological, and experiential variables.

· How does watching television create feelings of paranoia in the audience?
· From the film maker’s and writer’s perspectives, what techniques are used to create feelings of paranoia in the audience?
· What the pleasures and anxieties of paranoid television for audiences and film/programme makers?
· Are some television genres inherently paranoid?
· How might television prevent individual or collective feelings of paranoia?
· What is the relationship between paranoid television and paranoid societies?
· Is contemporary society particularly paranoid and how does this relate to the nature and content of television output?
· How have certain moments in history helped to create paranoid television?
· What creates paranoia in those who perform on television?
· How can psychoanalysis and psychotherapeutic ways of thinking contribute to our understanding of paranoia and the affective experience of watching television in an emotive culture?
· Do programmes sometimes work psychologically as containers that help us to interpret and process paranoid feelings and cultural experience in more or less manageable ways?
· How can we draw on psychoanalytic ideas to formulate an understanding of the relationships between feelings of paranoia and television output?

To discuss these themes and others, this round table brings together experts from television practice, academic criticism and group therapy work. Please feel free to add to the debate by making contributions of your own!