One of the most interesting events at this year’s Festival looks at The mystery of mystical seizures, on 18th October. Early results from an on-going research project, due for completion in late October, are set to be revealed during a discussion about the mind and the roots of religious life. During the event, a panel of researchers, and people who have experienced mystical occurrences in seizure, address the implications for the spiritual, and the psychology and neurology of spirituality and religion.
The panel, including Reverend Professor Alasdair Coles, Rabbi Mordechai Zeller, Dr Joseph Tennant, and Iain Ball, explore how these experiences feel, the content of these experiences, their possible neurological roots, and what they might tell us about the brain and mysticism. Is this just the product of the brain? Do these experiences lose meaning if they're 'just brain stuff'?
Another fascinating discussion investigates the extremes of psychology and behaviour such as why women vote for Trump, cross-cultural homoprejudice, criticism of the McCanns, mass and YouTube suicides, and the best and worst of human nature on social media. In Of monsters and humans: the social psychology of extremes, on 27th October, social psychologists from Anglia Ruskin University discuss the extremes of human nature.
Dr Annelie Harvey, referencing new research and a paper currently under review, analyses how people can have extreme polar opposite reactions to instances of injustice such as that of the McCanns case. On the surface, an individual allocating blame of Madeline’s disappearance to her parents openly on Twitter seems very distant from an individual who pledges financial donations to the Find Madeline charity. However, one theory suggests that these two individuals are serving the same underlying motive via these polar opposite means.
Dr Magdalena Zawisza discusses extreme forms of sexism cross-culturally. How is it that in some countries women are being shot for going to school and in others they are free to become prime ministers? How is it that even in gender liberal countries there are women who support people like Donald Trump? And why even in such egalitarian countries feminist are subjected to death threats.
The other speakers include Sam Martin, who explores the differing nature of attitudes towards sexual and gender minorities across the globe; Dr Mick Finlay examines how Reverend Jim Jones, talked about death to his followers in the lead up to the mass murder/suicide; Dr Emma Kaminskiy considers extremes of social media, such as a controversial YouTube film on suicide and the subsequent backlash; and Dr Lewis Goodings explores the ‘best and worst’ of human nature in terms of the ways that people communicate in social media.
The extremes of social situations and the effects on mental health are again explored during The extremes of everyday life and the poetics of psychoanalysis, also on 20th October. A panel investigates the ’extremes’ in therapeutic practice: working with people who are homeless, children who present challenging behaviour, and people with brain injuries.
The speakers are psychotherapists Tim Hunter on the place of extreme emotional experiences and how they are bound up with everyday life, Fliss Cadbury on working with people who are homeless, Antoinette Fox on therapeutic work with children who present challenging behaviour in school settings and are considered ‘extreme’, and Simon Lacey on his use of ecology in his work with people who have experienced brain injury.
Other related events include:
Extremes in violence: what can we learn from violent and peaceful societies and places? (20 Oct). Cooperation and violence are opposite poles of human experience. Some societies, institutions and places are highly violent, while others promote cooperation and mutual respect. Four experts discuss core ideas about the root causes of these differences, and how research can help us to better address different forms of violence.
Praise and blame (22 Oct). Renowned author and psychologist Terri Apter on how being judgmental shapes our relationships and why it may not be such a bad thing. The talk is based on her most recent book, Passing Judgment: Praise and Blame in Everyday Life published earlier this year.
What’s your story? Counter stories to combat the real sense of feeling like a fake (27 Oct) Workshop led by Dr Terri Simpkin exploring why so many of us feel like a ‘fake’ and how the ‘stories’ we carry forward from early learning, society and the workplace colour our view of ourselves and influence our behaviour in the workplace and in our personal lives.
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