Category Archives: Conferences and Lectures

Psychoanalytic Filiations: Upcoming UCL events on history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Here is an opportunity to attend two  seminars, the first about the history of trauma and the second, about Ernst Falzeder’s new book, ‘Psychoanalytic Filiations: Mapping the Psychoanalytic Movement’ ( Karnac), at University College London on 18 July 2015. It is not so easy for Antipodeans, at such short notice, to merely pop on the plane to visit London for a week or so just to attend these events, but if one was in the area….! One could certainly dip into Falzeder’s book! Or, in the light of current historical interest about the Great War and Gallipoli  explore further the way trauma has shaped psychiatry in the Oceania Region.

An interview with Falzeder about his work, published in Cabinet magazine, is located at this link:http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/20/falzeder.php

Falzeder’s work prompts reflection about Australia’s own psychoanalytic genealogy and the way this has shaped the psychoanalytic stance and thought. How has the Hungarian School, Ferenczi and Clara Geroe’s analyst, Michael Balint shaped the approach to analysis in the eastern states? What is the influence of Anna Freud in Western Australia? As the children of Empire returned from England after training as Kleinian analysts  and therapists during the 1970s, another wave of thought washed across the continent. And as psychoanalysts arrived from Argentina in the 1970s, Lacanian analysis provided another trajectory of thought. More recent, perhaps, is the turning to indigenous thought and philosophy for what we can learn about the mind.

h-madness

Two upcoming events at the UCL Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines:

PROFESSOR MARK MICALE: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF TRAUMA
UCL, Tuesday 16th June 2015, 6-7.30pm

Historical trauma studies continue to burgeon, but the work in this
flourishing field of scholarship is derived from a small number of
purely Euro-American catastrophic events, which serve as historical and
psychological paradigms. Micale, who contributed to earlier debates in
the field with his edited collection Traumatic Pasts: History, 
Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930, argues that
scholars need now to look beyond the West toward a new, more genuinely
global perspective on the history of trauma. He focuses in particular on
new research being done about Asia.

PSYCHOANALYTIC FILIATIONS: MAPPING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT
UCL, Saturday 18th July 2015 2-6pm

How does one write the history of the psychoanalytic movement? This
event marks the publication of Ernst Falzeder’s book, Psychoanalytic
Filiations:…

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Religion, Fanaticism and Trauma – The Freud Conference, Melbourne, 2015

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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. Historically there has always been movements that have drawn youth to its ranks – whether the Children’s Crusades of the 12th century or more recently the Spanish War and Hitler youth. ISIS is another attracting teenagers to its ranks. Why this is happening at this time will be a question for future historians.

This year Melbourne’s Annual Freud Conference, to be held on Saturday 16 May at Melbourne’s ‘Brain Centre’ in Royal Parade, Parkville,  welcomes two speakers who have made a particular study of fundamentalism and violence in the individual: Dr Dr Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber and Dr Werner Bohleber, both from the German Psychoanalytical Society.

Dr Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber will deliver two papers: ‘ Processes of Political Radicalization’ and ‘Psychoanalytic Projects on Prevention: Working with Migrant Families.

Dr Werner Bohleber’s paper is entitled: ‘Radicalized Religious Fundamentalism: Identification With an Idealized Object and Destructiveness’.

The full agenda is here.

The registration form is here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“An Illustrious Unknown Man” – Trigant Burrow and Group Analysis – Seminar

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

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The Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists is presenting a morning seminar on 8 November 2014 at 18 Erin Street, Richmond from 9.00 until 1.00pm. The Seminar is for people interested in the History of Psychoanalysis and in the Politics of Discourse.

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In their recent biography of Trigant Burrow  the editors Edi and Giorgio Pertagato refer  to him as an “AN ILLUSTRIOUS UNKNOWN MAN”. Their work, a reclamation of Burrow and his work as a psychoanalytic theorist, shows his thinking about group analysis predicted the work of Foulkes. Conceptually Burrows pioneered a clear theoretical shift from drives to relationship and relatedness which made him unpopular with Freud. He began working psychoanalytically with groups in the early 1900’s, and coined the group analytic terms “matrix”, “group analysis” and “social unconscious”.Burrows’ name and creativity has almost completely disappeared from the history of Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis. S.H.Foulkes, acknowledged as the father of Group Analysis, mentioned him but, the Pertagatos argue, did not acknowledge Burrows’ contribution sufficiently.

Burrow was an analyst who trained with Freud, was analysed by Jung. In 1911 he founded the American Psychoanalytic Association with Ernest Jones and others, and was the first co-president of the American Psychoanalytic Society.

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Dr Paul Coombe and Dr Peter Hengstberger will both present papers based upon their reading of Burrows’ work.

Paul Coombe’s Paper: ”FREEDOM, CREATIVE THINKING, PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE AND POWER’, will  explore some of these ideas and look at how creative and paradigmatic breakthroughs are not enough. They they need a receptive place to grow. Entrenched, privileged and organised power cliques can dominate and squeeze out divergent streams of thought.

Dr Peter Hengstberger, in his paper: ”SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WORK OF TRIGANT BURROW AND HOMOPHOBIA’, will focus more directly on particular aspects of Burrow’s work which are also related to the dominant and entrenched views of the time and culture.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr Paul Coombe is a psychiatrist and individual and group psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Melbourne. He was formerly Consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne and Overseas Senior Registrar in Psychotherapy at the Cassel Hospital,London from 1990 to I993. He is the immediate past president of the AAGP and a member of the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. He has published widely in local and international journals including in areas of family therapy, psychoanalytic aspects of eating disorders, small and large analytic groups, Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy and the works of William Shakespeare.

Dr Peter Hengstberger is a psychiatrist and individual and group psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Brisbane. He is the current President of the Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists and a member of the Queensland Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association.

DETAIL

Cost for non-members of AAGP $60.00

For catering purposes please register by email to Dr Frances Minson
frances.minson[at]gmail dot com
You are very welcome to stay to lunch.
AAGP website : http://www.groupanalysis.net.au

An Anthem for Little Children

22 Sunday Jun 2014

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With many thanks to Antoinette Ryan...

It is the practice of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia to have its annual conference during the Queen’s Birthday Weekend in June. Because the PPAA is a federated structure, with each state having its own psychoanalytic psychotherapy association, each state takes its turn to hold the annual conference.  In recent years the preference has been for city venues. People are time poor these days. But for some years the conferences, which began in 1982, were often held in country venues around Australia. One can imagine how lovely it would have been to troop off to a winery, or to an island off Queensland, in the tropics where it is warm and sunny in contrast with the cold of the southern midwinter, for a weekend of fine dining, wining, talk and frivolity.  But in 1998 the organisers decided that St Josephs Home, a disused Catholic orphanage in Ballarat, a goldfields city in Victoria, some two hours drive from Melbourne, would be an apt venue. Why this was chosen is lost in the veils of history. The effect on conference delegates housed together for three days in a place where there were so many relics and reminders of the harsh lives of former residents, the little children who lived there, lies behind the composition of an anthem. Ostensibly it is a song for psychoanalysis. I think it is for those little children.

Ballarat, a regional city of some 86,000 people, was once the site of the first Victorian gold rush which began in 1851. Fortune seekers flocked to the diggings from Britain, America China and Europe – one of them my great grandfather in 1856. He tried his hand at digging but eventually became a policeman. He was too late for the Eureka Rebellion of 1854, a protest by the ‘diggers’ against licensing fees, whether one was successful or not, and enforced by the police. After the gold was spent Ballarat did not decline as several other towns in the region did but turned itself into a commercial government centre servicing the western districts of the state. In this corner of the British Empire grand buildings and large houses were built, schools. parks and gardens were established and the churches each staked out their hill. This small city, echoing the British life at home in the old country, also had its share of hospitals, asylums gaols and orphanages. The Ballarat Asylum built in 1877 was renamed the Ballarat Hospital for the Insane before becoming the Lakeside Mental Hospital. It was called the Lakeside Psychiatric Hospital when it closed in the 1990s.

St Josephs Home in Sebastopol Ballarat, was founded c.1911, and closed in 1980. During the last decade or more the Forgotten Australians, children who grew up in such homes, have begun to describe and document their experiences. This has culminated in two national apologies from the government. The first to the ‘Stolen Generations’, children of Aboriginal origin removed from their parents, in February 2008. The second apology, which occurred some eighteen months later in 2009, was to the ‘Forgotten Australians’, to all children who had been placed in out of home care. This came after many years of lobbying by these groups  and investigation by the relevant bodies which included the Catholic Church. The children, now adults, tell of their abandonment, and the search for a good maternal figure. Some tell of the lies they were told, that their mother was dead, to discover, years later, that their mother was alive and that her letters to them were with-held. Children remember harsh conditions in which they were forced to live. They recall the exacting  and arbitrary discipline that often disguised physical and verbal aggression. Many were sexually abused and as I write, a Royal Commission investigating child sexual abuse in institutions is traversing the country gathering evidence. In 2009 the University of Melbourne also apologised for its use of ‘orphan children’ for medical experimentation. In all these accounts the alone-ness of each child pierces one’s heart as we listen to their struggle to survive. This is not to say there were not good experiences to be had and, indeed institutional care may have provided relief from very difficult home circumstances. However the question about why the state of Victoria chose institutional care over boarding out of its state children remains. Recognition of the value of the maternal bond for the well-being of children, argued carefully by prominent author and activist, Catherine Helen Spence, in her 1907 book, State Children in Australia, was  incorporated into state children relief legislation in New South Wales and South Australia from 1871.

Members of 1998 psychotherapy conference  at the Ballarat orphanage, a live-in event in one of the coldest regions of Victoria in the depth of winter, thought a great deal about the history of these buildings and former residents. They were haunted. Too.  Were there ghosts in the room? Or did they  hear their endless cry of little children or caught glimpses of others locked in silence of despair? It was the oppressive quality of the atmosphere they remembered. There was no beauty in that place.

One of those who attended that conference was Antoinette Ryan. During her long career, beginning as a psychiatric social worker in Melbourne and Sydney, Antoinette has held various official positions in the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, including Chair of the Membership Committee and of the House Committee, and has been a member of the VAPP Council and the Training Committee.

She retired two years ago, and now devotes her time to socializing with family and friends, painting classes, and learning the art of bonsai. Occasionally she surfs, either in Cornwall or Tasmania. She has written short stories, and was a potter for some twenty years.

‘It was a terrible place’, she said of the Boys’ Home. “We were haunted by ghosts of the place; we all felt spooked. It was terribly oppressive.’ She wanted to find a way to respond, to counter the deadly sense of emotional deprivation about her. And so an anthem was created.

Here are the words of the anthem, published here with Antoinette’s permission. It is to be sung to the tune of ‘Jerusalem’ with apologies to William Blake and acknowledging the composer Hubert Parry, who composed it in 1916 as an anthem to a nation in the depth of the Great War. It was subsequently appropriated by the suffragettes, with Parry’s permission, and first sung by a massed women choir at the Royal Albert Hall at a suffrage rally in 1918 as an anthem for freedom from oppression

‘Jerusalem’ is an apt choice of melody and sentiment. It urges reclamation of mind and soul. It is a protest against oppression as it urges us to fight for our lives as the little children had to do. The date of composition for Antoinette’s piece was 7 June 1998. It was revised on 10 June 2007. Here it is. You can sing it if you like!

PPAA Anthem

So here we are, as Winter comes,
Gathered to meet and share concerns.’
So we are here, we meet again,
From distant corners of our lands.
 

And do we dare to hope for more?
For therapy to grow in depth?
Till be defeat despair, beat despair,
And foil destruction’s grasping hands.
 

Bring us our chair, our couch of pain,
Save us from mem’ry and desire,
Bring us our Freud, our Jung, our Klein,
For highest standards we aspire…
 

We will not hold with mental flight,
Nor let our inner hearts be blind
Till we have traced the threads, faced the dreads,
And fortified our thinking minds.
 

If you would like to be reminded of the original ‘Jerusalem here it is.

 

About Looking After Children in Hospital – 1953

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in 1950s, Bowlby and Attachment Theory, Children in Hospital, Conferences and Lectures, Newspaper reportage, Public debate

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In my previous post I noted that Hungarian born and trained psychoanalyst Dr Andrew Peto was a speaker at Sydney’s twelve day Pacific Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood  in August 1953. Sponsored by the World Health Organisation with sixty delegates – medical practitioners, teachers, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers -.from sixteen  west Pacific and South East Asian countries it was a talkfest on child psychology not seen before. The director of the seminar was Dr. F. W. Clements lecturer in child health at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the Universality of Sydney and  formerly chief of the Nutrition Section of W.H.O.  The purpose of the seminar was to  consider those forces in the child’s home and communal life that could help or hinder him in his growth towards a mature personality’. Curiously this international Congress was scarcely reported even though delegates were considering the leading research of the day. Melbourne’s Argus newspaper provided a brief overview of the conference under the heading: Experts have some cute ideas of how They’d Bring Up Mother” concluding that at the very least, professionals were better informed.The Sydney Morning Herald relegated the matter to the Women’s Pages with a major article on women doctors from South East Asia. In a thinly veiled attack upon these highly qualified professional women, the Herald wondered why they were not at home tending their children and carrying out household tasks.  Only one of the major Australian women’s magazine, the Australian Women’s Weekly contributed a well thought out item about a topic  covered during the conference about the needs of  children in hospital. As you will see the author, Veronica West, drew upon newly published Attachment research by John Bowlby and James Robertson.   West carefully negotiated some contentious issues between doctors and reformers.Thanks to the National Library of Australia’s website TROVE, we are able to read these articles easily. West wrote:

Are Australian hospitals mending the bodies of sick children while blindly subjecting their minds to emotional stress more damaging in many cases than the disease or condition from which they are suffering? Must the price of the child’s health be submission to an inflexible hospital routine which catapults him from the security of home to a world in which his two paramount fears are realised – desertion by his parents, injury at the hands of strangers? Is Australia to lag behind progressive English and American hospitals which encourage the presence of mothers at the bedside of their sick children? Many medical and hospital representatives who attended the Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood at Sydney University last August are asking themselves these questions.A few enlightened paediatricians (child specialists) and doctors have long been trying to introduce overseas reforms in Australia. The safeguarding of children from unnecessary, frightening experience and training the nursing staff in basic concepts of child psychology are other steps, being taken abroad.First to throw down an official challenge to the old hospital visiting system is the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. It now proudly announces the success of a scheme which makes hospital routine fit in with new daily visiting hours for mothers.

This article was set in motion by the distress of a friend who spent two weeks in an intermediate ward of a city hospital. She said she couldn’t forget the despairing cries of “Mummy, Mummy, where are you?” which she heard from a nearby children’s ward throughout the night. She was astounded to hear that mothers were only allowed to visit the children once a week. When my friend spoke to the night sister about the distress of the children, her anxiety for them was dismissed as maternal sentiment.

“Nonsense!” said the sister, “a sedative soon puts them to sleep. The kiddies are always like this for a couple of days after visiting days. We dread visiting days. They do more harm than good.” My friend was told that except for a few problem cases the children were perfectly happy with the nurses during the week. “They are quiet and good, and settled in, but as soon as mother comes they stage terrific tantrums.” When she told me the story my friend said that if her own child went to hospital and was as mentally distressed as some of the children she had seen and heard, she would insist, through her doctor, on reasonable access to her little girl. Was my friend being over maternal and foolish, or was she instinctively right? Í set about finding out.

West attended the Seminar on Childhood Mental Health in Sydney in August 1953. She wrote,

The Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood revealed something of the general impact of hospital experience on the child of pre-school age. Subjects discussed included depriving the child of the comfort of his mother’s presence, his fear of pain, the isolation and aimlessness of his existence, the uncertainty of ever getting home again, and the inner turmoil and emotional drive to which frail bodies were subjected.With two-year-olds or three year-olds, especially, it was pointed out, the immediate reaction was a period of agitated despair, during which the child screamed, refused food, and only exhaustion brought sleep. After i a few days he became the quiet, good, allegedly settled-in child-in reality the apathetic, frozen-emotion child who had reached a serious stage of mental sickness...Sir Ronald Mackeith, of Guy’s Hospital, London, told of reforms which remove the risk of hospital damage to the child’s personality. One of the simplest was the opening of wards to mothers, who fed, bathed, and generally assisted the staff in the care of their own child on their visits. The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, I discovered, had been experimenting with daily visiting for the smaller children over the past two years, had found this a success, and had introduced regular daily visiting for all children four months ago. The Medical Director, Dr. Vernon Collins, said that he regards the ideal as “free visiting where the parents may come to the hospital at any time.” He believes that this is essential to build up good relation ship between the mother and the nursing staff and to get the best care for the child.

Quoting this as an example, I interviewed leading paediatricians, medical men, child psychologists, hospital medical superintendents, matrons and sisters. I found the paediatriciains and doctors awake to recent research and already trying to apply the new methods to their patients, but still uncertain ol how general reforms could be carried out. Their reactions were surprisingly mixed, with individual but not collective antagonism to the new methods. Some had not heard of  visiting – hour reforms, and wary of the threat to hospital routine, were reluctant to hear of, or discuss, the subject. Others equally ill-informed listened kindly, but remained unshaken in their conviction that present methods were best. As an official spokesman put it, they were “sitting pat and waiting.”

West seems unimpressed by that response. She continued:  Here is the statement of the official spokesman of that hospital-the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Sydney, which has 485 beds and treated 11,777 in-patients last year…

“Just say we are interested in the entire subject and an studying all the material available, but we prefer to wait and see. There will be no immediate alteration in the Sunday visiting day for the children.”

Here, too, are some of the opinions expressed at interviews: First, a talk with a hospital matron with many years’ experience in children’s wards. “I think the reforms will have to come,” she said. “The seminar undoubtedly opened the eyes of some of us who have long prided ourselves on the physical care of children in our charge. The most efficiently run ward in Sydney is not worth the constant reproach of the screams of the frenzied child, or the misery and listless apathy of the quiet child, star ing blankly, hour after hour at hospital walls.”

The most outspoken of the pediatricians who recently returned from England and who had instituted more liberal visiting hours in his hospital outside London said this: “Christmas is coming, and we will again have Press photographs of happy children and gaily decorated ward:and once again people will murmur warmly, ‘The hospitals are wonderful going to so much trouble for the children!’ “What the enlightened child expert would like is a little of this Christmas sentiment from hospitals and doctors spread over twelve months in our children’s wards.“When I was a medical resident I agreed with the general opinion that the weekly visiting day for mothers, with its aftermath of temperatures up and chaos in the wards, was an unnecessary evil. “Experience brought wisdom. In the London hospital I arranged for the mothers to visit the children daily, dropping in and out for brief visits on the way to town or after shopping.”The mothers sometimes fed the children, tidied beds washed them, and were of real assistance to the nursing staff. Reassured by the seemingly casual visits of the mothers the children were happy and contented, and were discharged mentally and physically well. “Certainly some cried when their mothers left, just as children here in our private ward« who enjoy the. privileges of more frequent visiting do. But a little weeping at temporary parting is one of our natural human emotions. It bears no relation to the violent reactions, or, worse, the disturbingly quiet ones, of the visit-starved public-ward child. Of course, we must have hospitals for sick children, and any physical pain inflicted is negligible to the suffering it spares the child, but too often both doctors and parents undertake to put a child into hospital without giving sufficient thought to the matter”.

The Doctor continued: “Some parents fall down on ‘he job of preparing the child for what lies ahead. They, in mistaken kindness, tell him fairy stories or refer to his approaching period in hospital as a ‘party.’ “What happens when the child arrives for the ‘party’?

“Generally he is whisked away from his harassed mother at the admission office, and, stripped of his favorite teddy bear or chewing rug, he is jet propelled into his new world. For the next six days until visiting day he is walled up in a world of white, forsaken bv his parents, helpless against the towering, white-clad, masked strangers who periodically select him for injury. It is not the pain-most children can take pain better than adults-it is the terror of what it is all about that breaks the child. While the comfort of the sympathetic nurse is often refused by the child in his des- pair, the reprimands and threats of the thoughtless, ill tempered nurse aggravate the situation. “Some of our hospitals allow the mother to accompany the child to his bed, get him used to the nurse, as well as letting him keep his cherished toys.

“In others where haste and ordered routine is the rule the opposite is the case. In many of these hospitals it is still the current practice on chaotic tonsillectomy morning to line up about a dozen young patients on a form out- side their ward or adjoining the theatre for upwards of an hour, and drag them off one by one.. for the operation.”

A woman pediatrician had this to say: “‘Certainly periods in hospital do not affect all children, temporarily or permanently. This is also true of epidemics, yet we would not deliberately expose children to such a risk, I believe a system of staggered daily visiting hours would be best, with full co- operation between the doctor in charge and the sister. Of course, some mothers because of domestic duties or because they live a long way from the hospital would not be able to make the daily visit.”

And what of the position in hospitals or wards where the children may stay months or even years? Two doctors stressed the need for closer contact between mothers and children in such hospitals.

“I commend any doctor or parent about to confine a child to one of these hospitals to study Bowlby’s report to the World Health Organisation***,” one of them said. “As he and the famous Sir James Spence point out, these hospitals, despite the various activities, occupations, and entertainments arranged for the children, overlook one important factor -the depriving of the child of his mother. Perhaps Australia cannot immediately emulate these reforms, but some of the broken mother-child relationship can be repaired by extending visiting hours.

Finally I saw child psychologist Miss Zoe Benjamin. Clinging to mother, temper tantrums, bed-wetting, hostility towards the mother, and kindergarten activities are all typical symptoms of hospital experience,” said Miss Benjamin. Handled sympathetically by parents, these usually disappear, but can lead to serious results. The experts quoted agreed that the most urgently needed reform was an increase in visiting hours in children’s hospitals, which must be championed by an enlightened medical profession generally.

I for one was surprised to find this article published as long ago as 1953. I remember attending lectures at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital during the 1980s when Isabel Menzies Lyth from the Tavistock Clinic spoke about the needs of children in hospital. Here she advocated what one 1953 Australian Matron also promoted: that the ward be divided into smaller units with children allocated to a ‘team’ of carers during their admission? It seemed, upon listening to Mezies lyth that her recommendations and their implementations were far more recent. It is to be wondered about why such a large newspaper as the Sydney Morning Herald failed to report upon this and other matters arising from this international conference. Was there some sort of external pressure upon its editorial team not to do so? It would be interesting to look into this a little more.

*** “Child Care and the Growth of Love”-Penguin edition summary of the John Bowlby report to the World Health Organisation

References:

Child Care Is Their Subject. (1953, August 20). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 5 Section: Women’s Section. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18383141

Sick children need parents at their bedside. (1953, November 25). The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933 – 1982), p. 20. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article41447234

 

 

 

 

 

An Update The Freud Conference At The Melbourne Brain Centre – 18 May 2013

24 Thursday Jan 2013

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In a previous post about Melbourne’s annual homage to Freud, The Freud Conference  I mentioned that it was usually held at a place called ‘The Treacy Centre’, Parkville, in the centre of Melbourne.

This year, however, the venue is different. It will be at The Melbourne Brain Centre, Kenneth Myer Building, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville.

The Freud Conference has its origins in the Politics department at the University of Melbourne where a group of young intellectuals found a mentor in Professor Alan Davies ( Foo) and began to explore the application and influence of psychoanalytic theories and ideas upon the broader cultural context. That the Freud Conference welcomes attendance by anyone who has an interest in ways psychoanalytic theory intersects with our sociopolitical world is borne from these roots.

Advance notice for this year’s conference to be held on 18 May 2013 with guest speakers: research psychoanalyst Dr Nancy Hollander  and Australian barrister and human rights advocate Dr Julian Burnside,  can be found here.

The Melbourne Brain Centre itself is worthy of further exploration. As the largest brain research institute in the southern hemisphere it provides an umbrella for a number of organisations including….

The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

The Melbourne Neuroscience Institute

The Melbourne Brain Centre at the Royal Melbourne Hospital

as well as The Dax Centre which follows the work of Cunningham Daz  through ‘fostering understanding of the mind. trauma and mental illness through art and creativity. It houses Dax’s collection of artwork made by people who have experienced mental illness and trauma.

And of course there is a cafe and a branch of a favourite Melbournian browsing place Readings Bookshop.

 

 

“The Mental Life of Infants” – Dr Susan Isaacs’s Australian Tour, 1937.

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in 1930s, Conferences and Lectures, educational theory, Infancy, Susan Isaacs, western australia

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British Psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, an associate of Melanie Klein, was one of fourteen international speakers – and one of two women in the list – in the New Education Fellowship Conference which proceeded around Australia from July to September 1937. After a stint in New Zealand, the Congress, hosting about 50 delegates from 15 countries was one of the largest Australia had seen. At this time the Fellowship, founded by the other woman delegate –  French born, English Educationalist, Beatrice Ensor in 1914 – had 51 national groups, including Japan, and published 23 magazines in 15 languages. The New Education Fellowship rejected discipline and drill methods of education. Rather it utilised ideas from Theosophy, Jungian Psychology and Psychoanalysis to stress the need for educationists to develop methods resonant with children’s’ developmental needs. The first session was held in Brisbane in early August 1937 before delegates returned to Sydney to convene from 9 to 16 August. The Conference then continued in Canberra from 18 to 21 August – an interlude before moving onto Melbourne for another strenuous period. Then it was to move onto South Australia and then Perth where Professor Robert Cameron was organising the event. The Federal Government underwrote the conference to the tune of 1250 pounds.

Isaacs combined her official visit with the opportunity to visit her sister in Sydney. It is clear, through perusal of newspaper reports of the Congress that Isaacs’s lectures – given at each port – were well regarded, attended and reported in each of the states. What is of interest is the differences between the east, where clearly Isaacs was the guest of women’s  organisations such as the National Council of Women in Sydney and the West – Adelaide and Perth where the organising committee was largely drawn from the University of Western Australia as well as the Educational and Maternal and Child Health Sector.

Isaacs was welcomed in Canberra  where she was a guest of the British High Commissioner and his wife, Sir George and Lady Whiskard. Clearly there was a desire, if not hunger amongst these Canberra people to learn from her. Isaacs’s lecture on Child Psychology was well patronized: by senior members of Canberra society, by mothers whose children were cared for in a crèche especially organised for the day, and by maternal and infant nurses who closed their centres to attend. Her lecture, pitched at the general public, reached for the link between emotional world of children and behavioural expression. The reporter summarised:

Isaacs referred to the enormous field covered by child psychology and the many intricacies of the subject.. There are many schools of thought in” child psychology and she stressed the need for a ‘balanced view-point and the danger of adopting a method of child training that was partial and extreme’.  Confining her remarks to the method.of dealing with the child under six or seven years, Dr Isaacs said that difficulties encountered in children in the form of temper were quite natural. In America, two groups of children had been studied from birth up to six years of age. One group had been referred to a child clinic, and the other not, but in both instances the same tempers and fits of screaming had been manifested. The displays of temper are caused by the intensity of feeling in the child – his unrestrained love and hatred – and as the child grows the difficulties become less intense.

For Isaacs – and the other delegates – there were luncheons in Sydney, lectures in Adelaide and at least one interview, urging that educationists linking play and emotional development with education and learning, published in the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus.

In South Australia the advent of the Conference coincided with the announcement by the Council of Mental Hygiene to establish an Institute of Medical Psychology and Child Guidance in Adelaide. It was to be located near the Hospitals, the Children’s Court and the Education Department – and would employ psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. Again, the popularity of Isaacs’s lectures was marked. She spoke to packed auditoriums, her message: ‘the importance of understanding the mentality of children during the first two years of their life. The essential needs of the child, she said, were love and a feeling of security’.

Remarkably as South Australian audiences noted, Isaacs issued a challenge to the theory that a child had no mental life before the age of about two years emphasising both the importance of motherly love for the understanding of the child mentality and the vital part those early two years played in later life. These lectures provide a glimpse into the state of infant research and infant observations in the pre-war years. We learn from reading press commentary, from noting off the cuff remarks and explanations about research into the mental life of infants prior to WW2 and Esther Bick’s development of Infant Observation Seminars at London’s Tavistock Clinic a decade later.  Announcing plans for her attendance at South Australian leg of the conference a the editor of the Adelaide Mail wrote, ‘One of Dr. Susan Isaacs’ strong con victions is that in order thoroughly to understand the child we must observe him under conditions in which adult interference is reduced to a minimum’.

At the Conference proper, Isaacs stressed infant subjectivity: ‘A baby fed in a “stiff institution manner’ with a bottle lost a rich emotional experience which affected its after development’. Research amongst delinquent girls was revealing a common experience of  lack of love and affection during the first two years of life. It was during this period she continued, that the maternal infant relationship was central to the child’s intellectual and emotional development.

The lecture was also summarised by a reporter for the West Australian a week later.

“Too often the mental life of the infant of a year, or even two.years, is left out.of the reckoning and we are only just beginning to realise the importance of the mental development during the first two years of life. Delinquency, mental ill ness and crime which is apparent in after life often had its beginnings in this stage of mental development,” Dr. Susan Isaacs said. The reporter continued:-

Briefly tracing the course of infants’ mental growth and explaining the difficult ties met with when trying to understand their reasoning, Dr. Isaacs stated that a baby learnt by its own spontaneous efforts which took the form of play starting as early as the second month. Baby should, therefore, be given ample opportunities for play. In the same way speech developed from the first playful sounds until the child began to distinguish familiar and oft-repeated sounds, which we called words. The emotional development of the child was the next consideration. During the first two or three months baby’s feelings were complex and were expressed by sounds. During the first two months any strong effects-bright lights, loud noises, etc.caused discomfort. but after this such things attracted attention until by the end of the first year the causes of pleasure outnumbered those of discomfort. Another interesting change, which occurred at about five months, was the cause of crying. Up to this time baby cried chiefly because of physical unhappiness, but after this age social pleasures and displeasures came into the picture and baby would cry, for instance, when mother left him alone, or because he wanted to sit up and could not manage it. A child’s smile was another signpost of its mental process, Dr. Isaacs continued. Up to the age of 20 weeks the average infant would smile at anyone while from that age until about 40 weeks old they would smile only at intimates, after which they seemed to grow more delicately discriminating and smiled at those they considered  deserved the honour.

There was more. The reporter continued: Dr. Isaacs traced the causes of feeding difficulties, which were often bound up with a child’s emotions and fear of its own early biting instincts. Parents should recognise the amount of learning a child had to do, and introduce new foods and new methods of feeding slowly. Dr. Isaacs did not advocate forcing a young child to eat what was dis tasteful to it, the difficulty usually being overcome by presenting it in a different form.

The challenge now is to discover whether and how these ideas were developed within Australian culture.  Perhaps not at all. And indeed it was not until someone from Europe, in the form of the first Training Analyst, Clara Geroe both arrived from Europe and stayed to develop her work that a space was created for the development of these very rich ideas within an Australian context. Isaacs’s visit occurred during a period in Australian history when England and Europe were regarded as Home;  where  scholars and professionals travelled for the education they would bring back to the Antipodes. The role of the visiting scholar is far more problematic: evoking idealization on the one hand and, may be envy on the other.

References:–

The Argus ( Melbourne) 3 September 1937.

Canberra Times: 12 August 1937; 20 August 1937; 25 August 1937.

West Australian: – 11 September 1937; 20 September 1937.

Advertiser ( Adelaide) 26 May 1937; 6 September 1937.

The Mail ( Adelaide) 3 July 1937.

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 1937.

A Peep Into the Subconscious – Adelaide 1951

28 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in 1950s, Conferences and Lectures, Newspaper reportage, South Australia: Newspapers

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This item is taken from Adelaide’s ‘Advertiser’ dated 27 October 1951. One can never be sure about the reliability of sources when writing history. So much data is borne of subjectivity; what is included or excluded is a matter for a writer long ago. One can catch a glimpse, partially, into the milieux past and try to work out what happened on the basis of that evidence. History occurs in a space between now and then.

In October 1951 a newspaperman, by the name of Frank Dunhill, embedded himself in a meeting with a group of people interested in psychoanalysis. The resulting sketch of ordinary folk, albeit tongue in cheek, reveals a little bit about Australia in the 1950s. It is about the cautious exploration of new ideas and people, the emerging influence of European refugees in this post war period, about women finding time despite childcare responsibilities and wannabe pretenders with agendas of their own. Perhaps this was actually a group of Melbournians meeting with Hungarian born Clara Geroe with the resulting piece sold for publication  in Adelaide?  Perhaps the meeting was, actually, held in Adelaide.  Was it that Dunhill, like his counterpart in Sydney, Sidney J Baker, was knowledgeable about psychoanalysis – much more than he let on?  If anyone knows more about Frank Dunhill,  or indeed the people who attended these meetings, I will be pleased to hear from them.

Let us listen to Frank:

“There is more in psychoanalysis that meets the subconscious eye.

I know, because this week I attended the first meeting of a group of amateur Adelaide psychoanalysts who want to meet every week and talk about it.

Psychoanalysis deals with the analysis of the unconscious mind. Eight people were in the group. They included a new Australian from Hungary, a former commercial traveller who had read nearly all the text-books on the subject by Freud, Jung, and Adenauer, ( interestingly, a German pacifist and peacemaker within Germany during WW2…) a widow with one child, and a married woman — mother of three children – who came to Australia from Holland about 16 years ago. The convener of the meeting, a new Australian, also from Hungary, said he had studied psycho analysis in Paris, but had left for Australia before getting his diploma. Sitting next to him was an avowed pacifist from Melbourne, who once read half a pocket-book edition of a text book by Freud.

Next  to him was another pacifist who was once psychoanalysed, but was never told the result. Our host was a Scot.

I found my psyche was my soul. It had nothing to do with ‘Psyche at the well’.

The discussion eventually centred on child education.  Our host said he had often applied psychology as distinct from psycho analysis, to correct his child when she mis behaved. If that failed he used force. He found a combination of the two ‘very effective.’ The discussion went on. A lot of technical jargon passed over my head, and I didn’t catch up with the thread of things until somebody discussed mak ing a date for the next meeting.

That took a bit of working out because several worked shifts in their jobs. But by submerging their superegos for the common good they finally decided on Sunday night. The two women then went home and took their restraining influences with them.

After that things went a bit haywire. The two pacifists tried to show how wars could be stopped by psycho-analysis, but the rest of the meeting disagreed. Somebody accused a pacifist of woolly thinking when he tried to draw an analogy between oranges on a tree and people in a country. d Finally, psycho-analysis was discarded altogether and the discussion became a straight-out debate on pacifism,. The two pacifists became almost aggressive in defence of their own cult. When the meeting broke up about 11 p.m. the convener said he thought a plan of action should be drawn up at the next meeting. That made our host laugh uproariously. He thought that was the idea of the meeting at his home.

But as everybody had become acquainted and had in a way bared their souls to each other, the evening had not been wasted. I said good-bye, and left with a new-found Freudian complex and a now subdued pacifist as my companion.

The Freud Conference

08 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conferences and Lectures

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A crucial, must do event on the social and professional calendar of all good psychoanalytically oriented therapists, analysts, academics and anyone else who is interested here in Australia, is the annual Freud Conference in Melbourne. Convened, in recent years, by a panel of practitioners drawn from the various psychoanalytic associations, the current Freud Conference is heir to the Freud Conferences of the 1980s, held by the beach at a guest house – Erskine House – in the Victorian coastal town of Lorne. Nowadays it is held in May, usually the third Saturday,and, during the last few years at the Treacy Centre in Parkville, Melbourne… opposite a sports ground and not too far from the Zoo… if one wants a quick visit during lunch-time. For the 2013 conference the venue has changed. It will be around the corner from the Treacy Centre, or at least not too far away, at The Melbourne Brain Centre, Kenneth Myer Building, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville… across the road from the University of Melbourne.

Douglas Kirsner, a philosopher and academic together with Ed Harari a psychiatrist, hatched the idea together one day over coffee… and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here is the link to Doug’s account  – it needs no more from me….

Next year’s conference, to be held on 18 May next year will be about psychoanalysis and politics, about the emergence of terrorism and refugees. Nancy Hollander will be a keynote speaker as will be Julian Burnside whose legal work on behalf of refugees is well known here in Australia.

Further details on the Freud Conference website..

Psychoanalysis and Northern Queensland -1925

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in 1920s, Conferences and Lectures, historical source material, New Psychology, Newspaper reportage, Press, public education, Queensland, settler culture

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I found this item in the Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Queensland.

The date: 21 August 1925.

Professor Scott-FIetcher, from the University of Queensland, delivered a public lecture in tho Mount Morgan Technical College on Wednesday night on “Recent Developments of Psychology.” The chair was occupied by the Mayor of Mt. Morgan (Alderman A, P. Bedsor).

Mount Morgan is a town located in central Queensland, Australia. It is situated on the Dee River, 38 kilometres south of the city of Rockhampton, and is 680 kilometres north of the state capital, Brisbane. It is far enough away, one presumes – from a twenty-first century perspective – for the newly emerging disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis to be of little interest to people. Yet the National Library’s digitized newspaper collection, enabling an easy and closer look at the material at hand, reveals quite the opposite. From the 1920s Rockhampton’s Morning Bulletin frequently published items about psychoanalysis – in favour and not. Along with the Barrier Hill Miner in Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie‘s daily newspaper along with those of the state capital cities, it is possible to see that there was widespread and lively interest in this ‘New Psychology’ as it was called, from the early decades of the twentieth century.

Let us listen to the reporter’s account of Professor Scott-Fletcher’s address. He clearly enjoyed it.

“In the course of a very fine address, the lecturer said that psychology was the science which investigated all mental states, normal end abnormal Some years ago the subject was mainly studied as an introduction to philosophy but during this century psychology had made great advances as an independent science. Moat universities had a laboratory, in which, by means of experiments, it was possible to test general intelligence, memory, and perceptual ability. The study of the mental equipment of animals had shown that instinct in human beings was one of the main factors in behaviour. The professor then described how the discovery of the unconscious mental processes in man had opened up an immense field of research. The application of these results to education, mental disorders, and even business efficiency had been attended with great success.”

“The use of psychoanalysis by Freud was next described. The lecturer explained that the undue prominence given to sex in this method had led to several new developments, in which Jung, Adler, and Bjerre had by other methods, successfully treated pathological cases due to mental maladaptation to environment. Psychology, while deterministic in theory, yet aimed in its practical applications nt securing freedom for the individual by making his actions self-determined.”

“At the close of the lecture the professor very lucidly answered a number of questions; asked by members of the audience. The lecture, was greatly appreciated by a good audience, and a hearty vote of thanks was accorded the lecturer”.

Professor Scott-Fletcher was New Zealand born and. according to his obituary published in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail on 7 November 1947, took his Master of Arts degree at Sydney University in 1902. He won the University Medal for Philosophy. He became the Master of King’s College at the University of Queensland in 1912 and, in 1916 was appointed to Wesley College at the University of Sydney where he also tutored on philosophy. He was appointed as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland in 1922 and resigned in 1938. At the time of his death he was 79 years of age.

There may be, of course, more to learn about the Professor.   You can contact me via freudinoceania[at]gmail[dot]com  if you would like to add to this.