September 24, 2009
Clark U marks centennial of Freud visit
Public events slated, including Sophie Freud talk, 'Living Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family' - Oct. 3
Sigmund Freud visited Clark University in September 1909, his only visit to the United States, his only lecture at a university in the Americas, and his only honorary degree from a North American institution.
After arriving in and touring New York in late August, Freud and others sailed to Fall River to board a train for Worcester. They joined many notable scientists for the famous Clark Conferences, organized by Clark president by G. Stanley Hall to mark the 20th anniversary of the research university.
At the time, the conference attracted nationwide attention. Other participants included such influential thinkers as Carl Jung, Ernest Rutherford and Franz Boas. Audience members included William James, who had a long conversation with Freud on the campus, and Emma Goldman, who writes about the event in her memoirs, describing "the array of professors, looking stiff and important in their caps and gowns." The conferences garnered some colorful reportage of the day in Boston, New York and Worcester. The Worcester paper wrote: "All Types at Clark ... Men with Bulging Brains Have Time for Occasional Smiles."
To mark the centennial of this famous occasion, some of the world's leading scientists will gather at Clark to explore the workings of the mind and new developments in the study of brain and genetics, the psychological approach, and how thought, motivation and emotion play a role in behavior.
The academic conferences, from Oct. 3 to 5, form the centerpiece of Clark's centennial commemoration, "Great Minds Come to Clark – Freud Revisited." A "Global Freud" symposium and President's Lecture will be held in November.
The public is invited to the following free, public lectures:
Sophie Freud, professor emeritus of social work at Simmons College, will present a talk and selected readings from her book, "Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family," beginning at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, in the Daniels Theater, Atwood Hall, Downing Street.
Professor Freud, previously a practicing clinical social worker and supervisor, was born in Vienna and lived near her famed grandfather, psychologist Sigmund Freud, until she emigrated with her mother, first to France and then to the United States. Sophie Freud attended Harvard College and the Simmons School of Social Work. She continues teaching and writing in her retirement.
"Electrotherapy Then and Now: Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Treatments in Psychiatry" is the topic of a public lecture by Global Freud Symposium keynote speaker Sander Gilman, presented at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, in Razzo Hall, Traina Center for the Arts, 92 Downing Street.
A cultural and literary historian, author and editor, Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, where he is the Director of the Program in Psychoanalysis and the Health Sciences Humanities Initiative. Gilman is currently working on a biography of Sigmund Freud.
For more information on the 1909 conference and details about the 2009 commemoration, visit Clark's Freud Centennial Web site.