Date: Friday 23rd November 2012 at 7 PM
(Drinks – 6.30pm)
Venue: The Institute of Psychoanalysis, Byron House,
House112A Shirland Road, London W9 2EQ

 
Victoria Brittain’s lecture is based on her experience over the last ten years of living close to a number of families whose male members were caught up in the British authorities’ response to the US War on Terror. Her book, Shadow Lives, the Forgotten Women of the War on Terror, will appear early next year, but for her lecture she will be using the material differently and focus mainly on psychological experiences.

She was a journalist, mainly at The Guardian, for many years, and lived much of that time in Africa, and the Middle East. Much of her reporting was as a war correspondent, starting with Vietnam. She has been a UN consultant on two reports on the impact of conflict, one on women, and one on children.

She has previously written, co-written, and edited seven books before her new one.   All of them came from her life experience outside the UK. She has also written or co-written two plays related to Guantanamo Bay prison. “The Meaning of Waiting” is one of her plays and one of her books “Enemy Combatant” was written with Moazzam Begg on his experiences in that prison. When Moazzam came to speak at an Institute meeting in January 2007 he asked her to accompany him. It was the last time they saw James MacKeith.

Victoria Brittain had met James MacKeith earlier as he was one of the very few people in the early days of 2003 who was sufficiently appalled by the black hole of knowledge, as well as of law, relating to Guantanamo, to want to discuss what might be done about the men from Britain who were there.

JAMES MACKEITH OBE, who died in 2007, was an outstanding Forensic Psychiatrist, dedicated to Human Rights issues and to the collaboration between his field and psychoanalysis.

TICKETS: £15     Please make cheques payable to: The Institute of Psychoanalysis and send to Marjory Goodall, The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 112a Shirland Road, London W9 2EQ or call 020 7563 5016 to purchase tickets using a credit or debit card.     Email: [email protected] or book online via www.beyondthecouch.org.uk