April’s Friday evening lecture (7pm-9pm) and Saturday workshop (9am-1.30pm) unpack the ideas from Eve Maram’s book, The Schizophrenia Complex (Chiron, 2022), which focuses on the thoughts and feelings constellated by encounters with the phenomenon called schizophrenia. In writing for those who experience symptoms and for those others impacted by them, Dr. Maram had to face her own fear, denial, resistance, and ultimate not knowing. The events that inspired the book were beyond her control and rearranged her life without her permission.
The unique complex Dr. Maram identifies results from our relationship with the unconscious, and our corresponding personal and collective attitudes toward schizophrenia—how its meaning manifests and the intense emotional responses it arouses. This program will also address how our reactions to schizophrenia affect those we label as suffering it, potentially arousing their own complexes about their state. Such encounters with schizophrenia inevitably raise the question of how we relate to our own schizophrenic propensities—or at least our dreaded potential thereof—which in itself can become a complex.
Bridging from personal story to the collective and archetypal, this program will engage participants in a ground-breaking account of the feelings and emotions generated by schizophrenia.
