This event is a collaboration between the Institute of Psychoanalysis, the Royal Anthropological Institute and CPU London

HOW DID WE GET HERE AND WHY?: Exploring the Overlaps Between Psychoanalysis and Anthropology

In conversation with Hugh Brody and Mike Brearley
Chaired by Naomi Segal

Friday 17th November 2023 | 6:00pm – 7:30pm (GMT)

In their two new memoirs*, Mike Brearley and Hugh Brody have written about the unexpected but intensely absorbing directions their lives have taken. In their conversation about these books, they will share memories that link the personal with the professional. They will also explore some of the fascinating bridges across seemingly wide intellectual divides: both anthropologist and psychoanalyst are participant observers, intensely engaged with the other but also capable of detachment. Both are on the edge looking into the culture or the patient. Both aim to combat tendencies to assume that the practitioner, by virtue of their training, automatically achieves a dispassionate neutrality. These and other zones of overlap between their different but parallel ways of working and understanding the world will guide their conversation.

*Mike Brearley, Turning Over The Pebbles, A Life of Cricket and in the Mind. Constable. 2023.

*Hugh Brody, Landscapes of Silence, From Childhood to the Arctic. Faber & Faber, 2022.

Hybrid: at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and Online Recordings available for 1 week access.

To book please go to https://psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=1494&reset=1

Hugh Brody: Anthropologist, writer and filmmaker, Hugh Brody worked for many years with Canadian Inuit and First Nation communities, mapping hunter-gatherer territories, and researching land claims and indigenous rights. He has also worked on indigenous cultural and land-use projects in western India, Australia and southern Africa. Hugh’s books and documentary films include The People’s Land, Maps And  Dreams, The Meaning of Life, The Other Side of Eden and Inside Australia with Anthony Gormley. In 1984 he directed the British film Nineteen Nineteen.

Michael Brearley: Retired English first-class cricketer who captained Cambridge University, Middlesex and England, having been ranked as England’s greatest-ever cricket captain. Since his retirement from professional cricket, he has pursued a career as a psychoanalyst and writer, serving as President of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 2008-10. Michael’s books include The Art of Captaincy (1985) and On
Form (2017).

Naomi Segal: Professor Emerita at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research interests are in comparative literature, culture and theory,
with a particular interest in psychoanalysis, the body, the senses, gender and sexuality. Her current and most recent books are on replacement.