Wunderblock
03/06/2019 - 05/26/2019
open to public
Organizer: Freud Museum London
Venue: Freud Museum London
20 Maresfield Gardens
NW3 5SX London
United Kingdom
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Wunderblock is an exhibition of new work by artist Emma Smith, drawing on original historical research into the post-war fascination with the infant mind.
This research, undertaken by the Hidden Persuaders Project at Birkbeck, University of London, examines ‘brainwashing’ during the Cold War. Smith’s exhibition particularly focuses on this history in relation to the child.
In the wake of World War II there was considerable anxiety about how children’s minds could be shaped or influenced to support fascism, communism or liberal democracy. A generation of children had also directly experienced the devastation of war, separation from their families, or life in institutions. Child psychoanalysis and psychiatry gained a prominent role and it was a time of great innovation and debate. However, observing and interpreting the developing mind, nurturing infant mental health, and supporting good parenting, also became powerful political issues. These were inextricably linked to the interests of the state, and aspirations for generating democratic citizens.
The mother’s close relationship with her newborn became a central preoccupation. The war years and the Nursery School Movement had helped enable women of all classes to work. Post-war research and debate offered conflicting messages, and put women under pressure to return to the home. Arguably, political interest in children’s care inside and outside the home was concerned as much with regulating populations, as with supporting the child and recognising their rights.
Smith’s exhibition turns some of this complex history of debate about nature and nurture, and about benign and malign influences over the child, on its head. Smith asks ‘What is the agency of the child?’, ‘What is innate to the infant and in what ways are they an ‘expert’?’; and, crucially: ‘To what extent does the baby or child influence their environment, and shape the adult’s world?’. Inspired by the rich material surrounding infant observation in psychoanalysis by practitioners such as Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Margaret Lowenfeld and Donald Winnicott, as well as the emergence of child-centred pedagogy and the anti-psychiatry movement, Wunderblock considers how we might engage with this history and meet the child from their own perspective.
3. Münchner Frühjahrsakademie 2018: Psychoanalyse Reloaded Trauma - Schuld und Scham
04/03/2019 - 04/06/2019
open to public
Organizer: Akademie für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie München e.V.
Venue: Hochschule für Philosophie
Kaulbachstr. 31 a
80539 Munich
Germany
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GERMAN
Psychoanalyse Reloaded
Trauma - Schuld und Scham
3. - 6. April 2019
Die Frühjahrsakademie richtet sich an StudentInnen, AusbildungskandidatInnen und Interessierte, die sich für zeitgenössisches psychoanalytisches Denken, moderne psychoanalytische Behandlungsmethoden und Forschungskonzepte sowie psychoanalytische Reflexionen zu brisanten gesellschaftlichen Themen interessieren.
Für alle, die psychoanalytische Kenntnisse für ihren Beruf nutzen möchten oder eine psychoanalytische Ausbildung anstreben.