Global experts unite to discuss historic dream of Freud’s patient Dora

Swansea University sleep expert Mark Blagrove is hosting special event to commemorate a significant moment in the history of dream analysis.

Professor Blagrove, director of the Swansea University Sleep Laboratory, will be joining forces with artist Dr Julia Lockheart of Swansea College of Art to invite an online audience to discuss a dream shared by a patient with Sigmund Freud in 1900.

The free online event, at 4-6pm on 31st January, will look back to when a patient of Freud’s, known as Dora, shared a dream about travelling to attend her father’s funeral. After telling the dream Dora stopped seeing Freud, and she has been hailed since as a feminist hero!   

The Zoom event will discuss Dora – now known to have been young Viennese woman Ida Bauer – and the relationship between her social and personal life and the two dreams she told Freud about.

There will be a reading of the dream from the very room at Freud’s apartment in Vienna, now the Sigmund Freud Museum, where Dora was seen by Freud.

During the discussion, attendees from around the world will also watch the dream being painted and discuss the painting with the artist.

The event, entitled Discussing & painting the father’s funeral dream of feminist hero Dora,has been organised by Professor Blagrove and Dr Lockheart as part of their science art collaboration DreamsID.com (Dreams Illustrated and Discussed). 

As well as members of the public from around the world, there will be a panel of experts, including psychologists, historians and psychoanalysts. The panellists will be:

• Dr Deirdre Barrett, Harvard Medical School, editor of the American Psychological Association’s academic journal Dreaming; 
• Kate Novack, Emmy-nominated film maker and director and writer of the recent documentary, Hysterical Girl, about Dora and the contemporary #metoo movement; 
• Professor Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Brunel University, London, and Fellow of the Freud Museum London, 
• Dr Brigitte Holzinger, psychotherapist, and Director of the Institute for Consciousness and Dream Research, Vienna;
• Katharina Adler, writer, author of the novel Ida, and great-grand-daughter of Ida Bauer / Dora;
• Professor Sharon Sliwinski, cultural and media studies professor at the University of Western Ontario;
• Zora Wessely, student at the University of Vienna.

You can find out more about the event and book your place now