Simon Gros

This talk centered on the question of what contribution psychoanalysis, starting with Freud, can make to our understanding of pandemic, and the tension it provokes between external danger and the perils of the unconscious mind.

How far was Freud’s thought implicated in these questions? What happens if we reconsider Freud’s writing as a theory of disaster, itself deeply caught up in the realities of pandemic and war? To what extent, in the recklessly ineffective policies of key world leaders, are we witnessing a new regime of psycho-politics, a form of quasi-psychotic denial of the human condition?

This recording is from 1st July 2021. Run by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, the internationally renowned London Critical Theory Summer School enables graduate students and academics to engage in a two-week course of study with acclaimed critical thinkers.

Jacqueline Rose is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.