Zelma Joffe Memorial Lecture 2024: Daniel Pick

Conspirators & Influencing Machines: Paranoia in Psychoanalytic Thought & Political Life

Daniel Pick, recipient of the 2023 Sigourney Award, is a renowned psychoanalyst and historian. Educated at Cambridge, he taught for many years at London University and is professor emeritus at Birkbeck, University of London. He is also a training and supervising analyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society. His notable works include Faces of Degeneration, War Machine, Svengali's Web, The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, and Brainwashed.

Join Daniel Pick as he revisits classic psychoanalytic ideas about paranoia. This talk will explore famous historical works, case studies, and cinematic representations to examine how past theories and stories can help us understand the turbulent times we live in today.

"Zelma Joffe, who passed away on 13 November 2010, was considered by those in the wider psychoanalytic community to be the founder of what today has become the Association of Johannesburg Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Groups (JPPSG). It was her foresight and effort that drove the initiative to start training and provide the forum for the psychoanalytic groups that now exist in the JPPSG. Zelma was an exceptional lady: intelligent, insightful, extremely well read and very elegant." (Gordon & Chait, 2011)