Crime in Mind
Book ticketsOrganised by:
British Psychoanalytical Society (incorporating the Institute of Psychoanalysis)
Description
An unexpected find in the British Psychoanalytical Society Archives sparked the idea for this conference. Amongst Sylvia Payne’s papers, our archivist discovered a collection of poems, drawings and songs gathered together as a magazine, ‘What we did in the Great War’ with contributions from ‘AC’, almost certainly Agatha Christie. Both women worked at Torquay Hospital during the First World War, Agatha Christie in the dispensary and Sylvia Payne as the Medical Superintendent. These were formative years from which they went on to highly distinguished careers. Sylvia Payne was a pioneering psychoanalyst and twice President of the Society.
This find set the Archives Committee thinking about the connections between crime fiction and psychoanalysis, between psychoanalytic investigations and detective work and the work of historians using archival material. Fact, fantasy and imagination may mingle in the exploration and interpretation of history, the history of psychoanalysis and history as it appears in the work of psychoanalysis where a psychic ‘crime’ may dominate the mind.
To set the scene, the BPAS archivist will introduce our archives and archival research. In person conference participants will have the opportunity to view a display of archival material.
Drawing on historical research and archival material, two papers explore firstly the links between the emergence of the science of clues in crime fiction and psychoanalysis and secondly, the role of psychoanalysts in the transformation of criminology in the 1950s.
In the afternoon, the first paper looks at the how the psychic ‘crime ‘emerges powerfully in a psychoanalysis and a final paper draws on Freud’s reference to ‘Criminals from a Sense of Guilt’, (1916) to understand a subset of internet offenders.
The focus of the conference is not primarily on forensic psychotherapy but on how the concept of the crime provides a vehicle for psychoanalytic exploration and development.
—————
9.45am – 10,00am – Introduction | Louise Lyon, Conference
Convenor & Christine English, Chair, Archives Committee
10.00am – 11.00am – The archives and archival research | Ewan O’Neill
10.00am – 11.30am – Break
11.30am – 1.00pm – Morning Panel | Chaired by Prof. Daniel Pick
Freud with Holmes; or, The Missing Modern Solution
Prof. Matt Ffyche
Drawing on her work in the BPAS archives
Prof. Michal Shapira
1.00pm – 2.30pm – Lunch and viewing archival material
2.30pm – 4.00pm – Afternoon Panel | Chaired by Carlos Fishman
On surviving the psychic crime: “…do analysts get killed in sessions…? | Prof. Jan Abram
On Freud’s ‘Criminals from a sense of guilt’ – Heather Wood, DPhil
