’Memoir’ Lisa Appignanesi and Blake Morrison in Conversation with Jane Haberlin

A sold out event recorded at the Anna Freud Centre Library on 30 January 2013.  The Relational School (of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy) and the Freud Museum are holding a series of intimate evening forums addressing the subject of memoir from the perspective of how writing and publishing has come to affect the individual’s experience of their own story. Conveying a life illuminates profound aspects of our human story and our struggles to situate ourselves and to belong. As organisations concerned with the meaning and impact of reflection, we are delighted to welcome these esteemed memoirists to join us in conversation and reflection upon what it means to have shared their history in this way. As her mother slipped into the darkness of old age, authorLisa Appignanesi began to realise how little she knew of the reality behind the tales she had heard from her Jewish parents of wartime Poland. With vivid intelligence and without piety, 'Losing the Dead' brings to life what she discovered. At the same time the memoir considers the workings of individual and collective memory and charts the legacy of war and immigration as these rumble through the generations of a family. Novelist and poet, Blake Morrison's, moving memoir 'When Did You Last See Your Father?' was made into a film (with Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson) and takes us into the heart of a family as a father lies dying. It plumbs father- son relations and family secrets: in the process understanding grows. With Psychotherapist Jane Haberlin, the two writers explore the possible links between memoir writing and couch memories. Jane Haberlin trained with Arbours as a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. She has worked at The Arbours Crisis Centre and The Women’s Therapy Centre. She is a founder member of The Relational School in London. She currently works as a therapist and supervisor in private practice and provides consultancy to organisations.