Meg Harris Williams and Jeff Eaton present: Exploring Personal and Theoretical Perspectives on the Work of W.R. Bion and Donald Meltzer
3 part seminar series
February - March, 2025
Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis is pleased to offer three public lectures in early 2025, online. These lectures will explore personal and theoretical perspectives on the work of W.R. Bion and Donald Meltzer, two of the most well-known and significant psychoanalytic thinkers.
Tuesday 11th February 7.30-9.00pm AEST
Our eternal home - our self: Bion in his autobiographies
Presenter: Meg Harris Williams
Chair: Eve Steel
Meg Harris Williams will speak about the film The Becoming Room, a video of a play performance based on Bion’s autobiographical writings, including clips from an unfinished film of Bion’s Memoir of the Future. Meg wrote the scripts and will discuss the psychoanalytic ideas dramatized by the autobiographical episodes. Both films are available on YouTube, and you are encouraged to watch them prior to the lecture.
The Becoming Room: https://youtu.be/14Wc8U6m2_w
A Memoir of the Future: https://youtu.be/_wQNA3JkiyI
Tuesday 11th March 7.30-9.00pm AEST
Aesthetic conflict and creativity
Presenter: Meg Harris Williams
Chair: Eve Steel
In this presentation, Meg Harris Williams will discuss Melzer’s ideas about aesthetic experience and its role in personality development and creativity.
Saturday 29th March 2.00-5.00pm AEST
Welcoming suchness
Presenter: Jeff Eaton
Chair: Matthew McArdle
In this seminar, Jeff Eaton will present his personal reflections on his experience working with Bion’s ideas, specifically the theme of “listening to myself listening to another”. His paper will be followed by an interview with Matt McArdle, and a discussion with the audience. This seminar is jointly presented by the Melbourne and Sydney Institutes for Psychoanalysis.
When:
Tues 11th February 7.30-9.00 pm
Tues 11th March 7.30-9.00 pm
Sat 29th March 2.00-5.00 pm
Recording available for a two week period post each event
Where:
Via Zoom $90 single seminar | $240 for all three
Biographies
Meg Harris Williams
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is a writer and lecturer on literature and psychoanalysis and a visual artist. She teaches internationally and is a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic and for AGIP (Association of Group and Individual Psychotherapy), London, an honorary member of the Psychoanalytic Centre of California, and editor of The Harris Meltzer Trust, including the Collected Papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick, and Selected Papers of Donald Meltzer. Her books and papers have been translated into many languages and include: The Apprehension of Beauty (with Donald Meltzer; 1988), The Vale of Soulmaking (2005), The Aesthetic Development (2010), Bion’s Dream (2010), The Art of Personality in Literature and Psychoanalysis (2017), Dream Sequences in Shakespeare (2021), and Donald Meltzer: A Contemporary Introduction (2021). Website: www.artlit.info
Jeffrey L. Eaton
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Jeffrey L. Eaton, MA, is a graduate and faculty member of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a member of the IPA, and a Board-Certified Psychoanalyst (CIPS). He received the Frances Tustin Memorial Lecture Prize in 2006 and has been the Beta Rank Memorial Lecturer at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, the Margaret Jarvie Memorial Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, a presenter at The Tavistock, London, and the 2017 International Guest Lecturer for the Australian Psychoanalytic Society. He has also been a frequent guest speaker at the International Frances Tustin Trust meetings as well as at International Bion meetings. He was a founder, instructor, consultant and Chair of the Steering Committee of The Alliance Community Psychotherapy Clinic, a project of The Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study. For over a decade he participated in INSPIRA, the International Seminar on Psychoanalytic Intervention and Research into Autism and is currently on the board of the Frances Tustin Trust, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He teaches and consults in Australia, Germany, Scotland, Canada, and throughout the United States. He provides psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in his private practice in Seattle, WA, USA. He is the author of A Fruitful Harvest: Essays after Bion as well as many chapters in edited collections. Information about his work can be found at www.jleaton.com.
Eve Steel
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Eve Steel from Melbourne, is a retired Child Psychotherapist, trained in London at the Tavistock Clinic, where she became a senior member of staff in that discipline and a Psychoanalyst trained at the British Institute.
Matt McArdle
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Matt McArdle is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Melbourne and is the current Chair of the Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis.