Crime in Mind

Crime in Mind
Saturday 1st February 2025
9.45am - 4.45pm (GMT)

Hybrid - Online or In Person at the Institute of Psychoanalysis

This conference will be recorded and available for 2 weeks*

 

An unexpected find in the British Psychoanalytical Society Archives sparked the idea for this conference. Amongst Sylvia Payne’s papers, our archivist discovered a collection of poems, drawings and songs gathered together as a magazine, ‘What we did in the Great War’ with contributions from ‘AC’, almost certainly Agatha Christie. Both women worked at Torquay Hospital during the First World War, Agatha Christie in the dispensary and Sylvia Payne as the Medical Superintendent. These were formative years from which they went on to highly distinguished careers. Sylvia Payne was a pioneering psychoanalyst and twice President of the Society.

This find set the Archives Committee thinking about the connections between crime fiction and psychoanalysis, between psychoanalytic investigations and detective work and the work of historians using archival material. Fact, fantasy and imagination may mingle in the exploration and interpretation of history, the history of psychoanalysis and history as it appears in the work of psychoanalysis where a psychic ‘crime’ may dominate the mind.  

To set the scene, the BPAS archivist will introduce our archives and archival research. In person conference participants will have the opportunity to view a display of archival material. 

Drawing on historical research and archival material, two papers explore firstly the links between the emergence of the science of clues in crime fiction and psychoanalysis and secondly, the role of psychoanalysts in the transformation of criminology in the 1950s.  

In the afternoon, the first paper looks at the how the psychic ‘crime ‘emerges powerfully in a psychoanalysis and a final paper draws on Freud’s reference to ‘Criminals from a Sense of Guilt’, (1916) to understand a subset of internet offenders.  

The focus of the conference is not primarily on forensic psychotherapy but on how the concept of the crime provides a vehicle for psychoanalytic exploration and development. 

Proceeds from the conference will go to the Pearl King Archive Trust to support the maintenance and development of our internationally outstanding archive of psychoanalytical material. 

*This conference will be recorded but some clinical material may be removed. 

REFUND POLICY: Tickets are fully refundable until 14 days before the lecture, after which time no refunds will be issued.

Concession tickets are available, for students, BPAS candidates trainees. Please email outreach@iopa.org.uk if you are unsure if you qualify for a concession ticket.

Views and opinions expressed by speakers are their own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Institute, event organisers or other speakers. We expect delegates to respect the confidentiality of clinical material discussed in our events. The content must not be recorded, conveyed or disseminated in any format and participants must not share access to the event with non-registered participants.