Conference: Mourning and Melancholia

Ken Robinson:

Who is it that can tell me who I am?': King Lear and The Last Laugh 

This paper considers the failure to mourn the loss of role and identity in retirement and redundancy, using the examples of King Lear and W. F. Murnau’s silent film The Last Laugh (1924).

Ken Robinsonis a psychoanalyst in private practice in Newcastle upon Tyne, a Member and former Honorary Archivist of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at Northumbria University. He is a training analyst for child and adolescent and adult psychotherapy in the North of England and lectures, teaches and supervises in the UK and Europe. Before training as a psychoanalyst he taught English Literature and the History of Ideas in University and maintains an interest in the overlap between psychoanalysis, the arts and humanities. He is especially interested in the nature of therapeutic action, trauma, and creativity. Recent publications include "Empathy, tact and the freedom to be natural" American Journal of Psychoanalysis (2014), "On not being able to symbolise" British Journal of Psychotherapy (2014), and "The ins and outs of listening as a psychoanalyst" Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication (2015). He has contributed the introduction to the first volume of the Collected Works of Winnicott, edited by Lesley Caldwell and Helen Taylor Robinson (2017) and has a forthcoming essay on "Creativity in everyday life" in Donald W. Winnicott and the History of the Present ed. Angela Joyce (Karnac).