MEDIA AND THE INNER WORLD (MIW) NETWORK
COMEDY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS


VENUE: JERMYN STREET THEATRE
DATE: FRIDAY 9th JULY 2010
START TIME: 2.30pm
ENDS: 4.30 pm


Location: 16b Jermyn Street Theatre (Piccadilly Circus) London SW1Y 6ST Click here for directions


Details of Speakers and Chair

Tom Davis
Comedian
http://www.comedycv.co.uk/tomdavis/index.html
Tomstarted on the London circuit in the summer of 2005 and he also fronted his own BBC 6music show 'The Big Tom and Conrad show.'Tom performedat the Edinburgh fringe festival where he received very positive reviews. Tomis also an accomplished character comedian. In 2003 he duped the SKY ONE program'Guilty Secrets of the 1980's' into believing he in fact was a northern loner by the name of Steve Matthews. In this years 'Big Brother Celebrity Hijack' Leigh saw an opportunity to unleash Tom's character Martin Phillips on the Big Brother contestants.With Leigh in the guise of his alter ego Keith Lemon. Tom played 12 year old Martin, a hyperactive awkward lad Keith was looking after for the day. This was no mean feet, considering Toms 6-7, 18 stone frame. Yet the contestants and the public along with some of the production team fell for it. Since this elaborate scheme Tom has worked on a number of new characters, appearing in Russell Brands Comedy Live Presents with Leigh’s Craig David character.


Michelle De Swarte
Comedian
Having been based between New York and London for nearly a decade; 2008 saw Michelle’s debut as a TV presenter in the UK when she co-hosted Princess Production’s ‘The Fashion Show’ on ITV2. Her memorable appearance on BBC3’s ‘Best and Worst of 2008’ made the most of her brilliant off the cuff humorous style. Early 2009 saw her build on that success by hosting a pilot for the US version of the show for MTV. Her down to earth personality and fast, fun delivery has inspired her to try her hand at stand up comedy and she made her debut at the world famous Comix comedy club in New York in March 2009. Michelle has recently joined John Noel’s agency as new up-and-coming comedian. She had a very successful gig at the Monkey Business Club in Camden in January 2010 which was widely acclaimed by critics.


Dan Schreiber
Comedian
Dan is a stand-up comedian, radio producer, and also a writer for both radio and television. He co-created the BBC Radio 4 panel show The Museum of Curiosity with host John Lloyd and co-producer Richard Turner. Schreiber also acts as one of the researchers or "Elves" for the television panel game QI. Schreiber also acted as executive producer for Ken Russell's short Christmas film A Kitten for Hitler. His blog is at http://schreiberland.posterous.com/


Interviewer: Professor Brett Kahr
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Honorary Chair of Media and the Inner World Network
Professor Brett Kahr is Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health, and holds an Honorary Visiting Professorship in the School of Arts at Roehampton University, attached to the “Media and the Inner World” network.
A media psychotherapist of longstanding, he has presented several television documentaries, and served as Resident Psychotherapist on BBC Radio 2, and Spokesperson for the BBC mental health campaign “Life 2 Live”. He is delegate to the councils of both the British Psychoanalytic Council and to the Council for Psychoanalysis for Jungian Analysis, and teaches at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. Brett is a successful author and has published several best-selling volumes including Sex and the Psyche with Penguin Books.
http://www.convilleandwalsh.com/index.php/authors/author/brett-kahr/


Speaker: Dr. Iain MacRury
Associate Dean and Reader in Cultural Sociology
http://www.uel.ac.uk/hss/staff/iainmacrury.htm
Iain’s main areas of interest are advertising and consumption. He is the author of Advertising (Routledge). More specifically his interests include: advertising and cultural change, critical approaches to advertising, humour in advertising, psychodynamic and psychosocial approaches to advertising, changing advertising institutions, “promotional culture”. In addition to his work at UEL, Iain lectures in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, whereby he also supervises PhD students. Iain has a longstanding interest in humour, comedy and psychoanalysis.


Chair: Dr. Estela Welldon
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Dr Estela Welldon is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at the Portman and Tavistock Clinic. She is the founder and Elected Honorary President for Life of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. She is the acclaimed author of Mother, Madonna, ***** a book, which had a major impact on the psychoanalytic understanding of female perversion (and has even influenced at least one film-maker - read about this here). You can access a review of this book here. In her more recent book Sadomasochism she has explored the unconscious dynamics within sadomasochistic relationships drawing on clinical and theoretical sources.
http://www.estelawelldon.org/



What is the Relationship Between Comedy and Psychoanalysis?

Freud, who never returned to the subject after writing his 1905 book on the theory of jokes {..} suggested that "censors" in the mind form powerful, unconscious barriers that make it difficult to think "forbidden" thoughts. But jokes can elude these censors -- to create the pleasure of unearned release of psychic energy, which is discharged in the form of laughter. He explains why jokes tend to be compact and condensed, with double meanings: this is to fool the childishly simple-minded censors, who see only innocent surface meanings and fail to penetrate the disguise of the forbidden wishes.

(Marvin and Minsky, 1980), http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt

What is the psychology of humour and jokes? Why do we laugh and why do some of us want to make others laugh? What is it that prompts us to laugh at others and make them the butt of jokes? In his 1905 work Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) Freud argues that comedy is often used as a way of communicating anxiety and managing hostility. As with dreams, jokes are deeply symbolic and we can use them to learn more about the unconscious and the forbidden wishes and fantasies, which shape and mediate human experience. Like spontaneous slips of the tongue, these wishes find expression through jokes and humour in the course of our everyday lives. Our responses to those jokes can also tell something about the pleasures, longings and fears that influence who we are and the cultures in which we live.

Our event aims to explore these questions through a dialogue between psychotherapists, academics and leading contemporary comedians. Comedians use the symbolic power of humour to express a range of popular, cultural and personal dilemmas for TV and theatre audiences today. When we watch them perform, comedians such as Eddie Izzard, Victoria Wood, Michael Macintyre or Russell Brand allow audiences to experience a range of emotions from outrage to pleasure – thus providing a means of working through the many anxieties and frustrations that permeate contemporary culture. Alternatively, from the perspective of the comedian, what are the pleasures of making people laugh – and what makes people laugh today and what doesn’t and why?

Discussion Points
· Is there a relationship between humour, laughter and loss?
· What is the relationship between humour, laughter and anxiety?
· What makes people laugh today and why?
· What does it feel like to make people laugh?
· What are the unconscious roots of humour?