The Divided Brain and Human Meaning

 

The Divided Brain and Human Meaning
Presented in person by Dr Iain McGilchrist (UK)
Introduction by Professor Russell Meares

Join us in person or live stream this event
9.30 am to 12.30 pm
Saturday, 19 August 2017
Sydney University
ABS Case Study Lecture Theatre 1170
Darlington Ln & Abercrombie St,
Darlington
Map Info: https://studentvip.com.au/usyd/main/maps/61944

Why is the brain, an organ that exists only to make connections, divided and asymmetrical? Why is it
that, as every physician knows, the side, not just the site, of a brain lesion can make a huge difference
to what happens? What does it tell us about the structure of the world we inhabit?

The topic of brain lateralisation was taken over and distorted by pop psychology, and hence
understandably, but nonetheless irrationally, neglected by the mainstream.

Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the
Western World, will argue that lateralisation is now the topic in neuroscience of greatest significance
for understanding the human condition.
______________________________________________________________
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Cost: Members $90 Non-Members $120 Students $60
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Bank: Westpac
BSB: 032-069 | Account No: 46-9778
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The suggestion for this seminar was initiated by the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre.
The ANZAP Education Committee would like to thank the Brain and Mind Centre for drawing ANZAP’s
attention to Dr McGilchrist’s visit to Sydney.

ANZAP
PO Box 4087 | HOMEBUSH STH | NSW | 2140
Email: info@anzapweb.com | Tel: 02 8004 9873 | Website: www.anzapweb.com

About Dr Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal
College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant
Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London.

He was a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, and a
Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles
and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, medicine and
psychiatry. He is the author of Against Criticism (Faber 1982), The Master and his Emissary:
The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009), The Divided Brain and
the Search for Meaning; Why Are We So Unhappy? (e-book short) and is currently working on
a book entitled There Are No Things, to be published by Penguin Press.

About Professor Russell Meares
Russell Meares trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospital in London
from 1963-1968. He worked for two years at an in-patient unit specialising in personality
disorders, which was headed by the Jungian analyst, Robert Hobson. Together, they
attempted to develop an approach to psychotherapy appropriate to this group of patients,
now called borderline personality disorder. Hobson called it the Conversational Model.
Russell has established programs for the treatment of borderline personality disorder, which
have been taught across Australia.

Faculties for these programs have been created at the University of Sydney and also within
the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychotherapy, of which Russell Meares was
the foundation president. Outcome studies of the university program have appeared in
journals such as the American Journal of Psychiatry.

His major interests have been directed towards an understanding of the origins of borderline
personality disorder and to the delineation of suitable methods of treatment for it. These
explorations have been experiential, neuroscientific, and linguistic. The current NHMRC grant
with Professor David Butt and Macquarie University is of a linguistic kind, and involves an
attempt to characterize the essential linguistic structure of the beneficial therapeutic
interplay between a borderline patient and the therapist.