Media and the Inner World - Recently Updated Pages

Welcome to Media and the Inner World

MiW — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:14:16 CST

MiW brings together academics, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and media figures for a series of discussions about the role of emotion and ideas of therapy in popular culture in the UK.

All about MiW

A promo-doc directed by Awad Bhenick and based on the opening event
(double click to open in YouTube)

How to Join MiW

A new page has been set up to discuss our next theme,
Advertising, Disappointment and Desire

Click here for a related reading on Advertising and Loss, excerpted from Iain MacRury's book on Advertising

Please add to the page any questions, books or thoughts on how an object relations perspective can help us make sense of the functions and meanings of advertising. We welcome all contributions devoted to the psycho-cultural aspects of popular culture, so please click the 'Apply to be a Writer' button (above left).

Our Next Event

Advertising, Disappointment and Desire

A Round Table and Audience Discussion

Room One, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

Friday 12th March 2010 5-7pm. Nearest Tube: Hyde Park

Speakers:

Helen Powell, Senior Lecturer Culture Industries, Media & Advertising University of East London

Martin Bojam, Managing Partner 360 Education Branding & Marketing Agency

Carol Leader, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy

Chair: Iain MacRury, Reader in Cultural Sociology, University of East London

Book your free place at: miwevents@googlemail.com

IPA, 44 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8QS.
Directions: http://www.ipa.co.uk/displaycontent.aspx?id=2254

Join us for drinks afterwards at:
The Star Tavern
6 Belgrave Mews West,
Belgravia
London SW1X 8HT
http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_details.php?pub_id=225

Click here for Podcasts from our events!

Click here to sign a petition against the over-regulation of
psychotherapy by the government

MiW in the News

Photos from MiW 1
(Opening Symposium)

Photos from MiW 4
(Paranoia and Television)

Click on the photos to enlarge the slideshow

ADVERTISING, DISAPPOINTMENT & DESIRE

MiW — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:37:41 CST

Advertising has been analysed from a number of perspectives, yet most will agree that its images and messages have been significant in helping to shape experience and identities in every day life. Advertising has always played on the emotions of consumers, yet today, the poignant appeal of ads become evermore explicit as they invite us to explore a wide range of emotions – from the tearfulness of saying goodbye to loved ones at an airport –to the imagined highs of identifying with a community of parents and children dancing around in an apparently utopian rural setting before munching into McDonalds burgers. The themes of therapy are also there in ads that send up the hypnotized patient who lies on the analytic couch, recalling his life through images of past iconic ads. Such themes also coincide with a growing preoccupation with emotion and therapy within popular culture more widely. This therapeutic ‘turn’ is linked perhaps, to anxieties about social and cultural change and also new opportunities for therapeutic self-exploration within the shifting context of late modernity. Feelings of loss, vulnerability and disappointment, which often accompany contemporary cultural experience, may be psychologically defended against or explored creatively through different aspects of mediatised popular culture, and the iconic images and slogans of advertising are significant here. Advertising uses a range of strategies such as nostalgia (Hovis bread), sexuality (Cadburys Flake) escape (British Airways) and narcissism (L’Oreal -‘because I'm worth it’) to assuage disappointment, stir up desire, and shore up a fragile sense of self. The relationships between the growth of therapy culture, identity, emotion and advertising provide the context for the MiW forthcoming roundtable discussion on ‘Advertising, Disappointment and Desire’. This roundtable discussion brings together leading thinkers and practitioners in the areas of advertising practice and research and psychotherapy to explore themes and we warmly welcome everyone to come and take part.

Recommended Reading:
Campbell, C. (2005) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, third edition Great Britain: Alcuin Academics.

Powell, H. (2009) 'Count the beats of your heart not the fingers on your hand': The emotionalisation of promotional culture' in Sclater, Jones, Price & Yates (eds.) (2009) Emotion: New Psychosocial Perspectives, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

MacRury, I. (2009) Advertising, London, Routledge.

Richards, B, MacRury, I. and Botterill, J. (2000) The Dynamics of Advertising, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers.

Richards, B. (1994) Disciplines of Delight: the psychoanalysis of popular culture, London, Free Association Books

Related Seminars and Conferences

MiW — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:30:29 CST

Click on the links for further information on each event

NEW! Added March 2010 Jung and Film Conference

Added Oct 2009 Seminar Series:
Psychoanalysis and the Social Political Field: From Trauma to Pleasure

University of East London, Docklands Campus (Cyprus station, Docklands Light Railway)
WEDNESDAYS 3-5PM 2009/10

Psychoanalysis and the Social Political Field: From Trauma to Pleasure

MiW — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:27:49 CST

Seminar Series:
Psychoanalysis and the Social Political Field: From Trauma to Pleasure

University of East London, Docklands Campus (Cyprus station, Docklands Light Railway)
WEDNESDAYS 3-5PM 2009/10

These Seminars are part of the UEL Psychosocial Research Group’s activities and are open to anyone undertaking or interested in Psychosocial research.

October 21st room EBG10
Sarah Goode
‘Adult Sexual Attraction to Children in the Psychosocial Field: From the Clinic to Pop Culture’

November 4th room EBG.10
Galit Ferguson
‘Fear and the Family on Reality TV: A Psychocultural Approach’

November 25th room EBG.10
Candida Yates
‘Spinning, Spooning and Political Flirtation’

January 27th (Room TBA)
Susannah Radstone
‘Re-thinking Trauma - Guilt and the Pressure of the Past’

February 24th (Room TBA)
Paola Valerio
‘Trauma: Sexual Abuse and Group Analysis’

March 17th (Room TBA)
Scott Lash
‘Psychopower’

May 26th (Room TBA)
Derek Robbins
‘Philosophy, politics, and psychoanalysis at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris in the early 1950’s’

Jung and Film Conference

MiW — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:24:36 CST

MiW Members, Luke Hockley and Greg Singh, are organising the following event which may be of interest to members of the network.

Jung and Film: Post Jungian Takes on the Moving Image
Sunday 18th April, 2010
The Brunei Gallery
SOAS

Full details at www.jungandfilm.com

Events

MiW — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:44:55 CST

MiW brings together academics, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and media figures for a series of discussions about the role of emotion and ideas of therapy in popular culture in the UK.	Advertising, Disappointment and Desire A Round Table and Audience Discussion Room One, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Friday 12th March 2010 5-7pm Nearest Tube: Hyde Park Helen Powell, Senior Lecturer Culture Industries, Media & Advertising University of East London Martin Bojam, Managing Partner 360 Education Branding & Marketing Agency Carol Leader, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy Chair: Iain MacRury, Associate Dean Humanities and Social Sciences, University of East London IPA, 44 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8QS. Directions: http://www.ipa.co.uk/displaycontent.aspx?id=2254 The Emotional Work of Cinema Saturday 9th May 2009, 10.30 - 1pm. The Everyman Cinema, Hampstead, London To register, please send us an email miwevents@googlemail.com THIS EVENT IS FREE BUT YOU MUST BOOK A PLACE AS PLACES ARE STRICTLY LIMITED Our First Event: Media and the Inner World Opening Symposium Delegate Feedback Form - Scroll Down! Saturday 7th March 2009 The Portrait Room Grove House, Froebel Roehampton University London 10.30am - 6.45pm Programme 10.30 – 11 Registration, Tea & Coffee 11 – 11.45 Media and the Inner World: Opening Address Dr Candida Yates Dr Caroline Bainbridge 11.45 – 12 Break 12 – 1 My Media and My Inner World – A Natural History Prof Robert M Young 1 - 2 Lunch 2 - 3.15 Mediating Identity Prof Valerie Walkerdine Margaret Walters 3.15 - 3.45 Tea, Coffee and Biscuits 3.45 – 5.15 Culture as Therapy/Therapy Culture? David Aaronovitch Brett Kahr Prof Barry Richards 5.15 – 5.45 Closing Remarks and Future Directions Prof Michael Rustin 5.45 – 6.45 Wine Reception and Book Launch A Feminine Cinematics: Luce Irigaray, Women and Film The event will also see the launch of the Media and the Inner World website and books by all speakers will be on sale/display.

MiW brings together academics, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and media figures for a series of discussions about the role of emotion and ideas of therapy in popular culture in the UK.

Advertising, Disappointment and Desire

A Round Table and Audience Discussion Room One, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Friday 12th March 2010 5-7pm Nearest Tube: Hyde Park
Helen Powell, Senior Lecturer Culture Industries, Media & Advertising University of East London
Martin Bojam, Managing Partner 360 Education Branding & Marketing Agency
Carol Leader, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy

Chair: Iain MacRury, Associate Dean Humanities and Social Sciences, University of East London

IPA, 44 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8QS. Directions: http://www.ipa.co.uk/displaycontent.aspx?id=2254

The Emotional Work of Cinema
Saturday 9th May 2009, 10.30 - 1pm. The Everyman Cinema, Hampstead, London
To register, please send us an email miwevents@googlemail.com

THIS EVENT IS FREE BUT YOU MUST BOOK A PLACE AS PLACES
ARE STRICTLY LIMITED

Our First Event:
Media and the Inner World
Opening Symposium

Delegate Feedback Form - Scroll Down!

Saturday 7th March 2009
The Portrait Room
Grove House, Froebel
Roehampton University
London

10.30am - 6.45pm
Programme
10.30 – 11 Registration, Tea & Coffee
11 – 11.45 Media and the Inner World: Opening Address
Dr Candida Yates
Dr Caroline Bainbridge
11.45 – 12 Break
12 – 1 My Media and My Inner World – A Natural History
Prof Robert M Young
1 - 2 Lunch
2 - 3.15 Mediating Identity
Prof Valerie Walkerdine
Margaret Walters
3.15 - 3.45 Tea, Coffee and Biscuits
3.45 – 5.15 Culture as Therapy/Therapy Culture?
David Aaronovitch
Brett Kahr
Prof Barry Richards
5.15 – 5.45 Closing Remarks and Future Directions
Prof Michael Rustin
5.45 – 6.45 Wine Reception and Book Launch
A Feminine Cinematics: Luce Irigaray, Women and Film
The event will also see the launch of the Media and the Inner World website and books by all speakers will be on sale/display.

Calendar of Future Events

MiW — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:20:44 CST

MiW will run a series of round table discussion events following on from the Opening Symposium. Please check back regularly for updated info on speakers, timings etc.

Friday 12th March 2010
Advertising, Disappointment & Desire
Venue tbc

April 2010
Comedy, Dread and Loss
Venue tbc

18th June 2010
The University as Transitional Space
University of East London

9th Sept 2010
Web 2.0 and Structures of Narcissism
PhD Media Agency, London (tbc)

10th Dec 2010
Politics, Containment and Contempt
The Frontline Club, London (tbc)

20th Feb 2011
Closing Symposium
The Tavistock Clinic, London

Previous Events

Saturday 9th May 2009
The Emotional Work of Cinema
The Everyman Cinema, Hampstead, London

Friday 19th June 2009
The Reparative Spaces of Radio
Venue tbc

Wednesday 16th Sept 2009
Paranoia and Serial Television
Venue tbc

Saturday 12th Dec 2009
Taste, Hunger and the Media
The Apollo Concert Room, The Crown Tavern, London

Links

MiW — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:22:27 CST

Please add any links you think will be of interest to fellow members.

Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy

The Squiggle Foundation

DART Centre for Journalism and Trauma

Psycho-Babble On... - the world seen from psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic perspectives

Transitional Phenomena and Cultural Experience (T-PACE)

Film Studies For Free - Winnicott and cinema page with a link to MiW

TASTE, HUNGER & THE MEDIA

MiW — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:23:54 CST

This event brings together Prof Mica Nava (UEL), David Lancaster (Food Journalist) and Mary-Jayne Rust (Jungian Psychotherapist) to discuss the role of taste and hunger in relation to emotion and our popular media. The following list of questions and perspectives offers a starting point for thinking about these questions. Please feel free to add your comments/create new pages to start the debate rolling!

· What is the relationship between taste, hunger and the media?
· What is our emotional relationship to food and how is this represented in the media?
· How are the pleasures of eating constructed today? How have they changed and what does this tell us about society?
· What do the different images of taste tell us about culture and society?
· How is our relationship to food shaped by class, gender and ethnicity?
· How might we use what we know as therapists from our work within eating problems to illuminate our struggle with consumerism?
· The accepted approach to over-eating is to go on a diet. Fat people are reviled and feared because they are seen as greedy and out of control, while anorexics are often secretly admired for their will of iron, their capacity to conquer their physical desires, mind over body. The fashion industry, and by extension the media, are complicit in this.
· Diets don't work in the long term because this route is about behavioural control and deprivation. Early unmet needs within vital early relationships may re-emerge in uncontrollable binges on food, sex or drugs, or numerous other ways in which we attempt to simultaneously get pleasure as well as kill pain.
· If we can stop consuming the earth for a second, and listen to our collective hungers, where might we go? What is it that we so fear, and what is it that we long for? How might the media engage with this?
· Our collective responses are very split. We are trying to tackle an obesity epidemic, yet our magazines, newspapers and TV are still enticing us back into ‘naughty’ food. As awareness of our global crisis is rightly increasing in leaps and bounds, and we are encouraged to go on a ‘green diet’ to reduce our carbon emissions...but the media is still full of enticing messages for us to spend carbon.
· Therapists know that something rather different happens when we stop trying to control/shut down and start listening to, and unpacking, the full range of hungers within - from physical bodily hungers for taste and feeding the senses - to emotional hungers for relationship, to spiritual hungers for mystery, meaning and purpose. These hungers run through our lives from early experience to the present day, from individual through family to culture. How can we begin to support each other in listening to what will satisfy our hungers amidst our hectic and distracted lives?

MiW Podcasts

MiW — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:08:25 CDT

MiW 1 Opening Symposium March 2009 'From "The Freud Squad" to "The Good Freud Guide": A Genealogy of Images of Psychoanalysis in the Popular Media' Dr Caroline Bainbridge (Roehampton University)	MiW 2 The Emotional Work of Cinema May 2009 This event was held at The Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, London. Our speakers were Dr Claire Pajaczkowska of the Royal College of Art; Dr Nicola Diamond of the University of East London; Margaret Matheson, founder and producer of Bard Entertainments. The event was chaired by one of the MiW Directors, Dr Candida Yates of the University of East London.

Click on the podcasts below to listen again to the keynote talks from the Opening Symposium held on 7th March 2009 at Roehampton University. There are also links to the recordings of each of the different round table discussions. Please add to the debate by giving us your comments and/or by starting threads, adding content etc...

MiW 1
Opening Symposium
March 2009

'From "The Freud Squad" to "The Good Freud Guide":
A Genealogy of Images of Psychoanalysis in the Popular Media'
Dr Caroline Bainbridge (Roehampton University)
MiW 2
The Emotional Work of Cinema
May 2009

This event was held at The Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, London. Our speakers were Dr Claire Pajaczkowska of the Royal College of Art; Dr Nicola Diamond of the University of East London; Margaret Matheson, founder and producer of Bard Entertainments. The event was chaired by one of the MiW Directors, Dr Candida Yates of the University of East London.

Click here to go to the podcast homepage to subscribe via iTunes, google or yahoo
(This page is under construction, so please keep checking back for more additions. You can also subscribe to the podcasts through iTunes, google or yahoo).

Calls for Papers

MiW — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:38:08 CDT

“The Psychosocial Imagination[i]” On behalf of the Psychosocial Studies Network Conference Organising Committee, we would like to invite papers for the: 3rd Psychosocial Studies Network Conference The University of East London, Docklands Campus Thursday 28th January and Friday 29th January 2010 The Conference builds on the last two successful annual events of the Network. This year we aim to link researchers for presentation and discussion of specific examples of psychosocial research, theoretical and / or empirical. Papers are welcome from any perspective within the new field of Psychosocial Studies, including submissions that relate to practice-based or practice-informed research, e.g. education, social work and social care, the arts, media, and the clinic. Concern with the nature of agency and intentionality, and discussions of the place of discourse, ethics and politics, affect and the unconscious, continue to characterise psychosocial research. Submissions may wish to link to one or more of the emerging themes in psychosocial studies which have been the subject of debate:

Psychosocial Studies as a political / radical / ethical project

What is the ‘object of study’ of psychosocial studies – is it the nature of subjectivity and subjecthood?

The possibilities for psychosocial welfare

Psychosocial Studies as an (epi?)phenomenon of ‘therapy culture’

Psychosocial study as a way of seeing, an effort of imagination, a particular sensibility

Plenary speakers: David W Jones (University of East London), Lynne Layton (Harvard Medical School), Michael Rustin (University of East London / The Tavistock Clinic), Christopher Scanlon (University of the West of England) and Paul Stenner (University of Brighton). Proposals of 300-400 words should be sent by 18th November 2009 to h.s.price@uel.ac.uk. This event is sponsored by the ‘Education: Policy, Pedagogy, Practice’ Research Grouping, and the Centre for Social Work Research, within the School of Humanities and Social Science at UEL.

[i] Using C Wright Mills’ description of the ‘sociological imagination’ as ‘…a quality of mind that “seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the internal realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities”, Joanne Brown (2006) refers to the ‘psychosocial imagination’ as exploring this connection without seeking to reduce the psychological to the social; the aim is to explore the ‘dialectic relation between social and psychic change'

PARANOIA AND TELEVISION

MiW — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:33:32 CDT

On Weds 16th Sept, Trevor Hearing will chair a round table featuring the following speakers:

Laurence Marks (TV comedy and drama writer)
Hugh Ortega Breton (academic, Roehampton University)
Karen Ainsbury (Group Analyst)
Paul Watson (Documentary maker)
Prof Barry Richards (Bournemouth University) - Respondent.

All welcome!

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!

THE REPARATIVE SPACES OF RADIO

MiW — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:38:34 CDT

The Reparative Spaces of Radio

Friday 19th June 2009, 6-8pm

The Base
Michael Maynard Associates
Victoria House
64 Paul Street
London EC2A 4NG
For directions please click here: http://www.maynardleigh.co.uk/our-company/how-to-find-us/

Speakers include:
Dr Anita Biressi, Reader in Media Cultures, Roehampton University
Andy Jordan, Radio Producer, Andy Jordan Productions & Senior Lecturer, Lincoln University
Dr Heather Nunn, Reader in Media and Cultural Studies, Roehampton University
Phillip Hodson, Broadcaster, Counsellor, Psychotherapist and Head of BACP Media Relations
Mrs Sally Weintrobe C. Psychol., Psychoanalyst, Fellow of British Psychoanalytical Society

BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE, email miwevents@googlemail.com

EMOTIONAL WORK OF CINEMA

hob74 — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:28:18 CDT

For discussions concerning emotion and popular cinema

DISCUSSION on SATURDAY 9TH MAY will run for 2 hours at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. There will be a montage of clips to illustrate the emotional power and specificity of cinema. The discussion will initially take the form of a round table and the discussants will include an academic, an analyst or therapist and someone from inside the world of film itself. We hope that there will be lively discussion from the floor. This is our first round table event so there are no set parameters as yet, all ideas are appreciated.

THIS EVENT IS FREE BUT PLACES ARE STRICTLY LIMITED. TO BOOK PLEASE EMAIL miwevents@googlemail.com
PLEASE NOTIFY US IF YOU CANNOT COME TO GIVE SOMEONE ELSE THE OPPORTUNITY TO ATTEND.

Psychoanalytic Articles on Cinema

These articles may be of interest and use in advance of the Saturday 9th May discussion:

Malater, E. (2007). David Cronenberg's Benevolent Pathology: Technology, Trauma, and the Perverse Social Link in Crash... The Psychoanalytic Review., 94:887-902. (available online at http://www.pep-web.org )

Downing, D.L. (2007). Paranoiac Visions and Neo-Realities in the Recent Cinema: Reflections on Tausk's “Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia” The Psychoanalytic Review, 94:991-1006.

Freely available here:
http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/abs/10.1521/prev.2007.94.6.991

Tylim, I. (2000). Film Notes: eXistenZ: The Blurring of the Organic and the High-Tech World in... The Psychoanalytic Review, 87:455-461. (available online at http://www.pep-web.org )

Clarke, G. (1994). Notes towards an object-relations approach to cinema. Free Associations, 4C pp369-390. (available online at http://www.pep-web.org )

Bainbridge, C. & Yates, C. (2005) Cinematic Symptoms of Maculinity in Transition: Memory, History and Mythology in Contemporary Film Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society,10:299-318.

How can psychoanalysis and psychotherapeutic ways of thinking contribute to our understanding of the meanings, features, effects and affects of film and cinema in an emotive culture? Does the development of high quality screens and sound for the home privatise the formerly public emotional experience of cinema? Do major films work as containers that interpret our culture in more or less manageable ways? How does successful marketing of some films generate expectations and investments in certain movies which only lead to disappointment? There are many, many questions to discuss. Start a thread.

Which contemporary and popular film stands out for you for its emotional power and why?
Requiem for a Dream http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE-rD8vcY4U

The Champ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgySx1MhzAo

Man Bites Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL1qjiuDWiw

In the Shadow of the Moon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRusDqEK4aI

Dancer in the Dark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1K78yhZDCc

Monster's Ball http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXBw8YftYPk

Braveheart The Freedom speech

Mamma Mia! Dancing Queen scene

The Piano Ada negotiates with Baines

Breaking the Waves Bess gets married

The Shining Little Pigs scene

Notes from the Couch 2

MiW — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:21:57 CDT

Jacqui’s PR Contest: ‘Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare’

No Recollection or Reworking but plenty of resistance and repetition

Our consumerist paradise (or hell depending on your tastes) is the new frontline of the war on terror. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5966489.ece According to the government there has been an increase in ‘shoplifting’ of the ingredients necessary for a ‘dirty’ bomb. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, (Smith also appeared on The Politics Show http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/7957714.stm and Today) on the morning of 24th March, Smith identified "shopping centre managers, store managers, people who were responsible for the security in those areas" as being key in the battle against terror. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Orwell’s 1984 as I read that ‘intelligence agencies could not be "solely" relied upon to tackle the threat.’ As with the rest of the New Labour portfolio, there are no rights without responsibilities, which means doing some of the vigilant surveillance ourselves. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hTVsyhUyXxY8Ux1Wx2pZ9yo-NX4g) http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gxDVT-EGIwg82hlUd-WWSez2aSMg An object relations psychoanalytic approach may be instructive here. After a number of years of representations clearly delineating protectors, potential victims and perpetrators akin to the triadic model described by Meltzer (1968) there is evidence in this story of a blurring of the distinction between victims and protectors by creating a level of protectors within the group of potential victims, the general shopping public. So the management, already isolated within their workforces for their managerial role, are to become despised further for assuming a suspicious gaze on their workforce and members of the public? The message from Smith seems to be: ‘you cannot rely on the authorities to protect you’ and this seems to me to be a bit of a cop-out because it is their job after all. The emphasis seems to be on everyone doing their bit to fight terrorism together with words such as ‘alongside’ and ‘shared’; there is a work of cohesion going on here. How do we make sense of this psychoanalytically? On the one hand the protector is saying, ‘fend for yourself’ on the other hand we are being encouraged to work together; the 'protector' is saying 'help me to help you'.

This passage from The Politics Show is of particular note in its ‘promoting of shared values’; a collection of good objects to protect against the ‘bad’ that is violent extremism. Interestingly, Smith avoids defining what a violent extremist is, ‘values like our belief in democracy, in human rights, in tolerance and if those things are attacked, that actually creates a space in which it makes it more likely potentially that people can be radicalized and turn to violent extremism’ (Smith, The Politics Show) Smith exhibits a very strange logic here, that destroying abstract values will in some way encourage terrorism, which is why prevention is so important to her. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that terrorist attacks will always occur. More importantly, what she is totally denying are the powerful emotions of hate, anger, resentment, grievance and a sense of persecution that are involved in this issue which is chiefly about identity and meaning in British culture. The terrorism problem provides politicians with an identity as protectors, as agents of security, compensating for their inability to win hearts and minds.

What kind of ‘object-signifier’ is a dirty bomb, (CBRN) in our culture? We know that the dirty-clean binary, (and the degrees within it) are a powerful metaphor in our culture as well as others, (see the work of Mary Douglas). There seems to be at least a degree of splitting and disavowal with this strong affective characterisation of terrorist bombs. Do we on the other hand have clean bombs? Media representations of our conflicts abroad would suggest that yes; we do, because we never see the bloody mess of corpses produced by British attacks, (the exception proving the rule being the occasion when John Simpson and his crew were caught in friendly fire, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2921807.stm). Coincidentally this attack by the protector on itself caused the death of the interlocutor, the translator who enabled communication between separate groups. There is also the meaning of ‘foul play’ to consider. Within (our) rules of war, it is considered very underhand to leaving a bomb like an I.E.D. lying around for someone to step on. We must also consider the hostile, violent response that this characterisation legitimates in advance, (see Brian de Palma’s Redacted 2007 for a savage personalisation of the conflict and the significance of not having interlocutors to communicate with the 'other'). That’s enough from me, please start a thread.

Opening Symposium - Biographies

MiW — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:07:43 CDT

David Aaronovitch is a writer, broadcaster and commentator on international politics and the media. He writes for The Times Comment page on Tuesdays. He has previously written for The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent, winning numerous accolades, including Columnist of the Year 2003 and the 2001 Orwell prize for journalism. He has appeared on the satirical TV current affairs programme Have I Got News For You and made radio broadcasts on historical topics. He is the author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country (2000) and Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (forthcoming in 2009).

Caroline Bainbridge is Reader in Visual Culture at Roehampton University. She is the author of The Cinema of Lars von Trier: Authenticity and Artifice (2007) and A Feminine Cinematics: Luce Irigaray, Women and Film (2008). She co-edited Culture and the Unconscious (2007) and has published in journals such as Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, Screen, Journal for Cultural Research and Paragraph. Caroline is also a Director of MiW.

Brett Kahr is Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Health, and a Visiting Clinician at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. In addition to his work as a clinician and author, he has worked as a media psychologist for more than twenty-five years, participating in over 1,000 radio and television broadcasts. Since 2004, he has been the Resident Psychotherapist at BBC Radio 2, and host of the BBC campaign ‘Life 2 Live’. He has also presented several television programmes on psychological topics, and serves as the Special Media Adviser to the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. Author or editor of six books, he has most recently published Sex and the Psyche (2008). He is a registered member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and Chair of the Society of Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists.

Hugh Ortega Breton is a Cultural Studies visiting lecturer and PhD student of risk anxiety and emotional representation in TV and news journalism at Roehampton University. His current specialism involves analysing representational styles used to portray terrorism and conspiracy theorising through the application of object relations psychoanalysis, and has a wider interest in the consequences of emotivism in public life, particularly in politics. He has spoken at the Institute of Ideas’ Postgraduate Forum, Battle of Ideas 2007 and has written for Culture Wars. Hugh is also the MiW Research Assistant.

Barry Richards is Professor of Public Communication and currently Deputy Dean of the Media School at Bournemouth University. Formerly Professor of Human Relations at the University of East London, he is the author of Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror (2007), and of scholarly articles on politics and emotion and on the therapeutic in contemporary culture.

Michael Rustin is Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, and a Visiting Professor at the Tavistock Clinic. He is an Honorary Affiliate Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and is currently Chair of its Applied Section. He is the author of many works on applications of psychoanalysis to cultural and sociological questions. These include The Good Society and the Inner World (1991) Reason and Unreason: Psychoanalysis, Science, Culture (2001); and with Margaret Rustin, Narratives of Love and Loss; Studies in Modern Children's Fiction (1987/2001) and Mirror to Nature: Drama, Psychoanalysis and Society (2002).

Margaret Walters has been a writer, journalist and academic. She taught literature for 20 years at Reading University and she has published books on art The Male Nude and Feminism: A Very Short Introduction. Margaret has also worked as a print and broadcast journalist on BBC Radio 4 and The World Service on such programmes as Kaleidescope and Critics Forum with Philip French and also edited The Listener. She became interested in the work of Marion Milner through the Squiggle Foundation, where she regularly attended meetings and presented papers. She is Marion Milner's literary executor and is currently editing Marion's final unfinished book Bothered By Alligators.

Valerie Walkerdine is Professor of Psychology in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK. Her previous publications include Growing up Girl (with Helen Lucey and June Melody), Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media Studies (with Lisa Blackman), Daddy's Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture, Children, Gender, Video Games and The Practice of Reason. She is editor of the journal Subjectivity. She is a member of the Royal Society of Arts and also an installation artist.

Candida Yates is Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at the University of East London. She is the author of Masculine Jealousy and Contemporary Cinema (2007) and a co-editor of Culture and the Unconscious (2007). She is an Associate Editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and a co-editor of Emotion: Psychosocial Perspectives (forthcoming in 2009). Candida is also a Director of MiW.

Robert M Young studied Philosophy at Yale, Medical Sciences at Rochester and History & Philosophy of Science at Cambridge. He taught at Cambridge, Kent and Sheffield, where he was Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies. He has been a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for twenty-five years. More information and writings at http://www.psychoanalysis-and-therapy.com/rmyoung/index.html

Resources

MiW — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:16:24 CDT

Please suggest any books, media or other resources related to any themes of interest. Essential reading, viewing and listening lists can be built around key figures in psychoanalysis, emotions, popular culture etc. Become a writer to add a page and edit the suggestions we build.

CALL FOR PAPERS

APCS Call for Papers
The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society

2009 Annual Conference:

Psychoanalysis, Economy, and Limits

Rutgers University: October 9-10, 2008

Submissions due by July 1, 2009.

This conference will address the intersection of psychoanalysis and the economy in light of the question of limits. Now when the enactment of an unlimited market economy has paradoxically revealed its limitations, the time has come to investigate the implications of psychoanalysis for thinking about economy and its limits. We are seeking proposals that investigate what psychoanalysis—both in its theoretical and clinical forms—can offer for an understanding of this intersection. Please think broadly about issues that arise in your discipline in relation to these questions. Topics might include:

➢ The possibilities for psychoanalytic interventions in the economy
➢ The economy of psychoanalysis as a theory or as a practice
➢ The economy in media studies
➢ Negotiating budgetary constraints and financial restrictions in psychoanalytic work
➢ The relationship between the infinite and the finite in psychoanalysis
➢ The other as a limit or the limitations of otherness
➢ New clinical, cultural, or theoretical interventions on the relation between psychoanalysis and limits
➢ Negotiating the limits of intellectual work in the struggle for social justice
➢ Psychoanalytic responses to economic crisis and anxiety
➢ The economy of race and ethnicity
➢ Psychoanalysis and the possibility of economic justice in a time of neoliberal hegemony
➢ How the economy might be politicized
➢ Contemporary investigations into feminism and psychoanalysis relative to the economy

We are particularly interested in panel proposals or roundtables that discuss these issues and also invite you to think of alternate formats that promote discussion.

Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words. Please attach a cover sheet that includes your name, primary affiliation, and contact information. Abstracts may be sent to: todd.mcgowan@uvm.edu

APCS, an interdisciplinary psychoanalytic organization, encourages all participants to reflect on the social importance of their contribution and its relationship to social justice. It is our view that the psychoanalytic investigation of culture and society constitutes a unique and indispensible means not only of understanding but also of intervening in our most serious social problems, and we encourage proposals that work to further this project.

Notes from the Couch 1

CaroBainbridge — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:02:51 CDT

My Dream Celebrity Death Match, Tyson v. Goody
Mediated Lives, (& Deaths) as reflective, 'therapeutic' Spaces
It appears that the popular media is capable of transforming the outlooks of individuals through the act of disclosure and sharing. The sins and sufferings of celebrities and other well known figures are apparently redeemed by the adoption of these aspects of a therapeutic mode. At the very least, they do get sympathy because they share their suffering and this provides different forms of entertainment for different types of viewer.

The lastest examples of this phenomenon are Mike Tyson, once indisputable heavyweight champion and the man everyone loved to hate, and the ubiquitous and soon to be deceased Jade Goody, the first child of Endemol's Big Brother. Both have caused and shared suffering in different ways and popular media editors understand the fascination that we have with love to hate figures. Both Tyson and Goody have lived and will die by the media, having undergone a number of transformations through their exposure. The new documentary on Tyson, adopts a combination of elements of a therapeutic mode and its motifs: by focussing only on him; representing memory, (through the use of archive footage) and conflict or splitting, (through the use of split screens and multiple voices speaking from Tyson's mind). He speaks of dark circumstances, responsibility and self-esteem. Is our fascination a therapeutically informed one or is it more akin to simply wanting to look at the freaks in the show?

Jade Goody has been filmed since 2002 and her last outings recently appeared on Living TV, (Jade: Bride To Be and Jade: The Wedding). Jade is merely doing what she does best, and what is doubtlessly best for her. There is a mutual investment on the part of Jade, certain production companies and her audience, and it would appear that everyone benefits in different ways. Others, are extremely annoyed by her presence, dismayed by the prominence her coverage gets. Two of the most interesting aspects of the recent coverage bring other significant 'hate figures' people into the saga of Jade's life. First, a woman found holding a hammer above Jade as she slept in hospital; and second, the friendly visit made by Shilpa Shetty, a successfull Hollywood actress who became the focus of Goody's envy and resentment in Celebrity Big Brother 2007. These stories hold together a fascination for Jade as well as figures that represent the contempt in which she is held by some people. Lastly the publication by OK! magazine of a tribute to Jade before her death raises questions about how the media can help us to reflect and cope with loss through the pre-mediation of events, a kind of apprehension mitigating against fright or shock which could be traumatic. Of course, very few people are likely to be traumatised by Jade's death but she will be missed, at the very least because she has occupied so much media space in the last seven years. My hope is that she does not actually die and that she is actually only dying in the media. In other words she is doing a Robert Maxwell in front of our very own eyes, saving herself, her family and us from anymore everyday stories of everydayness. But perhaps this everydayness has a comforting, reassuring effect?

It would be patronising and foolish to make any assumptions about Jade and Mike Tyson's actual characteristics; what is significant and more interesting is what they represent as media objects and ideas which we can relate to in one way or another. They are just a couple of fame's anti-heroes, living and dying as ideas in the popular imagination through the media. Both attract contempt, envy, hatred, indifference, fascination, and respect often in accordance with the way they have been represented. But in a bare-hearted fight, I wonder who would win and whom I would be cheering? Goody would probably win as the more media savvy of the two, so I would probably support Tyson because I like to support underdog, and Goody has annoyed me more recently. What you could be sure of I think, is that Tyson would win in the end for being the loser in the 'fight'. Does our popular media culture celebrate these victims and their sufferings 'to help us feel better' (in both senses of the phrase) and is that because our culture is too narcissistic for its own good; too concerned with personal stories rather than social transformations?

For Comment and Debate

CaroBainbridge — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:02:19 CDT

The first Notes From the Couch considers the meaning of celebrities and their sufferings writ large in our popular media

My Media and My Inner World

CaroBainbridge — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:01:33 CDT

Following on from Bob Young's paper at the opening symposium, several people have suggested that it would be interesting and helpful to have a resource on the site that allows people to add lists of their own media with comments on how/why it taps into structures of the inner world. For example, what's the difference between what you play on your iPod when you are cycling to work and what you listen to on a long train journey? Does this matter? How? Why? To add to the page, please just apply to be a writer on the home page. Perhaps we can follow Bob's lead and establish a broader natural media history of MiW members.