The esteemed B.B.C. broadcaster has recently interviewed Brett Kahr about his book on Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, as well as such topics as the nature of self-destructive behaviour and other-destructive behaviour during the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are the links to the podcast, available both on Chrissie Pollard’s website and, also, on YouTube.
In June, 2022, Professor Brett Kahr spoke at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Broadchalke, near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, about “Are We All Mad?: The History of the Human Mind, its Brilliance, and its Frailties”. He had the privilege to participate in an “in conversation” with the distinguished novelist, Sebastian Faulks, author of a gripping novel on nineteenth-century psychiatry called Human Traces.
After the conversation about the past, present, and future of “madness” with Mr. Faulks, Kahr enjoyed meeting many of the guests at a Waterstone’s book-signing.
To mark the publication of Professor Brett Kahr’s newest book, Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, the Swiss psychiatrist Dr. med. Sebastian Thrul has conducted a full interview with Kahr, which offers insights into how Sigmund Freud handled the multiple pandemics of his own lifetime and how he would have advised our governments and our health care specialists had he been alive today during the twenty-first century.
This podcast is Kahr’s third appearance on “New Books in Psychoanalysis”. The New Books Network had previously interviewed him about two of his other publications, namely, How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist and, also, Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel.
The New Books Network has recognised that Kahr’s latest title will be of interest not only to members of the psychoanalysis community but, also, to those from other disciplines; consequently, the podcast has been posted not only on “New Books in Psychoanalysis” but, also, on “New Books in Biography”, “New Books in German Studies”, “New Books in History”, “New Books in Intellectual History”, and “New Books in Jewish Studies”.
Kahr’s book is the inaugural title in the new “Freud Museum London Series”, published by Karnac Books of London (an imprint of Confer Limited), in association with Freud Museum London.
To listen to the podcast, please click on either of the following links:
We talk to Professor Kahr about his new book and his keynote presentation at Wimbledon Guild Counselling Training’s 2022 Conference: Reflections on the Pandemic, Covid-19 and Trauma
Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health profession for more than 40 years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London.
After serving for many years as Trustee of Freud Museum London and of Freud Museum Publications, he has now become the museum’s Honorary Director of Research.
We caught up with Professor Kahr to talk about his new book Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis (Karnac Books, 2021), inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic and to discuss his keynote presentation at our online 2022 Conference: Reflections on the Pandemic, Covid-19 and Trauma, Saturday 12th March 2022.
We are delighted that you will be presenting your new paper, “Unmuzzling Experts While Curing ‘Covidiots’: How Psychotherapists Can Prevent the Next Pandemic”, at our online conference next year. Could you tell us something more about the concept of “unmuzzling health professionals”?
Throughout this heart-wrenching coronavirus pandemic, we have received an overwhelming amount of data from politicians and public health officials about how to manage this dreadful global health crisis. However, in spite of the fact that broadcasters have reported a great deal about the decline in mental health, and in spite of the fact that members of the psychotherapeutic profession have never worked so hard, our insights about the unconscious roots of self-destructiveness and other-destructiveness have not become at all central to the narrative surrounding Covid-19. We know that many people contracted the virus quite unexpectedly, but many others have continued to spread this awful infection as clinical acts of aggression.
I believe that the psychotherapeutic and counselling professions have a great deal of insight to contribute towards a better understanding of the hidden unconscious and behavioural factors underlying what we might conceptualise as “unconscious viral transmission”.
During the pandemic, you have been delivering online lectures for Wimbledon Guild, Confer, The Freud Museum London, and the Viktor Wynd Museum, to name just a few organisations. What has it been like for you delivering your work online over Zoom?
I presented my very first public lecture back in 1979, in front of a live audience, so I must confess that switching to Zoom in 2020, more than 40 years later, proved rather a challenge at first, never having used a laptop before!
Fortunately, the wonderful technologically savvy team at Freud Museum London offered me a veritable masterclass in Zoom and I presented a fund-raising talk to help the museum, entitled “How Freud Would Have Handled the Coronavirus: Lessons from a Beacon of Survival”, which became the basis of my most recent book.
Naively, I presumed that the attendees would consist predominantly of the London “regulars”, but, to my great surprise and delight, we attracted colleagues from India, Iran, Pakistan and all over the world. And no one had to hop on an aeroplane! I have now become quite used to this new form of communication and it has permitted us all to meet some very intelligent individuals overseas with whom we would have had little or no contact in pre-pandemic times.
Please tell us about your new book, Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, which has just been published.
Over the last year, we have heard a great deal about everyone’s “lockdown projects”. Some people have finally learned how to speak Italian fluently or have dusted off their old violin. I devoted much of my time to the writing of a new book on Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, to help inaugurate the new “Freud Museum London Series” in association with the re-launched Karnac Books.
It will not be widely known that during his long lifetime Sigmund Freud endured not one pandemic but, rather six, of many varieties, including the so-called “Spanish Flu”, which claimed the life of his beloved daughter Sophie Freud Halberstadt in 1920.
Freud also had to endure decades of anti-Semitic abuse and professional shaming, as well as 16 years of cancer treatment, not to mention the invasion by the Nazis. Any other person who experienced such trauma might have passed by their own hand, but Freud always maintained great emotional sturdiness.
In this book, based on oral historical and archival research, as well as on a close reading of Freud’s untranslated letters, I have crafted a narrative of his six pandemics. I have also explored how he might have dealt with Covid-19 and, also, what lessons we may continue to learn from this iconic genius.
What are you most looking forward to about Wimbledon Guild Counselling Training’s 2022 online conference?
I believe that the 2022 conference will be my sixth lecture for Wimbledon Guild over the last 20 years. I have always had a wonderful time speaking to colleagues at this esteemed organisation. No two institutions attract the same type of audience, but those at Wimbledon Guild always respond with tremendous compassion and wisdom, and I hope that we can all learn a great deal from one another. The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated much of world thought due to massive traumatisation; therefore, no one can claim true expertise about the psychological impact of this awful illness or about the best ways in which to promote psychological prevention, but I do hope and trust that we can all pool our well-analysed minds at this conference and begin to craft a plan about how psychotherapists and counsellors can share our skills and insights even more fully in years to come.
Wimbledon Guild Counselling Training’s 2022 online conference: Reflections on the Pandemic, Covid-19 and Trauma is on Saturday 12th March 2022. View the programme and book tickets.
Please note: this event has already taken place therefore booking is for recording access only. On booking, your unique access codes will be included in your Eventbrite confirmation email and will have access for 30 days.
Tickets are offered on a pay-what-you-can basis, with a suggested donation of £10. Thank you in advance for your support of the museum at this very difficult time.
Booking closes at 11.30pm on 31 July 2021.
————————————————————————————————————
The era-defining book that will forever change the way you understand your mind.
‘To say this work is encyclopaedic is to diminish its poetic, psychological and theoretical achievement. This is required reading’ – Susie Orbach, author In Therapy
‘Truly a remarkable book. It changes everything’ – Brian Eno
Join psychoanalyst, neuropsychologist and author, Mark Solms as he discusses his latest publication, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness with psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, writer and social critic, Susie Orbach.
The neuropsychologist who discovered the brain’s mechanism for dreaming returns with a jaw-dropping insight into human consciousness that reframes everything we know about the workings of the mind.
How does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be us? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime’s quest. Now at last, the man who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming appears to have made a breakthrough.
The very idea that a solution is at hand may seem outrageous. Isn’t consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of science? Yet Mark Solms shows how misguided fears and suppositions have concealed its true nature. Stick to the medical facts, pay close attention to the eerie testimony of hundreds of neurosurgery patients, and a way past our obstacles reveals itself.
Join Solms on a voyage into the extraordinary realms beyond. More than just a philosophical argument, The Hidden Spring will forever alter how you understand your own experience. There is a secret buried in the brain’s ancient foundations: bring it into the light and we fathom all the depths of our being.
Author