Reading and Interpretation: Poetry, Memory and Psychoanalysis in Three Works of Adam Phillips

Prof Hugh Haughton will chair the third meeting of the ‘Reading and Interpretation’ discussion group, introducing three essays by Adam Phillips: ‘Poetry and Psychoanalysis’, ‘The Telling of Selves’, and ‘Psychoanalysis; or, Is It Worth It?’. Reading and Interpretation: Getting Over Freud is a discussion group for staff and postgraduate students interested in questions about how we read literature.

This series of seminars will look at contemporary writers, such as Martin Hägglund, Jean Laplanche and Edward Said, who have challenged our strategies of reading and ways of interpreting everything from death and dreams to sex and selfhood. The focus of discussion will be topics such as: should we read for surface or for depth? Does a text have an unconscious? And do texts say what they mean or mean what they say? We might all be reading after Freud, but the thinkers this series will explore are all getting one over, getting out from under, or getting (a leg) over Freudian modes of interpretation.

Professor Haughton has published widely on literature of the modern period and beyond, concentrating principally on poetry, the visual arts, nonsense, and psychoanalysis. He has written the introduction to and edited The Uncanny for the New Penguin Freud series, for which Adam Phillips is the general editor, and has collaborated with Phillips on a number of other projects. Adam Phillips is Honorary Visiting Professor in the English department.

Interested staff and postgraduate students from all universities are welcome to attend.

For copies of the reading or full details of the group and scheduled meetings, visit our webpage, or contact Alex Alonso or Doug Battersby.