Insane Leaders: Freudian Psychopolitics in the 21st Century

Insane Leaders: Freudian Psychopolitics in the 21st Century

Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster (Disorganisation & Sex, 2022) and historian Patrick Weil (The Madman in the White House, 2023) discuss their latest books through the lens of psychopolitics in the 21st century. Focusing on the body and sexuality’s disorganising potential, Webster brings clinical insights to the questions of authority, masculinity, and the death drive. Weil found Freud's lost psycho-biography of former president Woodrow Wilson in the Yale archives. Why was it so thoroughly rejected by critics, political theorists and by psychoanalysts when it came out in 1966? This conversation helps us to think about leadership, politics and madness.

This event is in partnership with Divided Publishing.

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is the author, most recently, of Disorganization & Sex and Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis; she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine. She teaches at the New School for Social Research.

Patrick Weil is a political scientist and a senior research fellow at the Centre for the social history of the 20th century at the University of Paris 1. His research focuses on comparative citizenship, immigration law and constitutional law. Weil is the author of a number of books, the most recent being The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, published in 2023 by Harvard University Press.

Tickets include a welcome glass of wine, out of hours visit to the Freud Museum and current exhibition Freud and Latin America.

A small number of bursaries are available offering a discounted ticket price. Contact email [email protected] for more information.

Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming.

Tickets are NON-REFUNDABLE.

The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular public income.

Event Venue

Freud Museum London, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, United Kingdom