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A conference entitled ‘Remote Control: Psychoanalysis and TV’ took place in the Anna Freud Centre lecture theatre, London on 29 and 30 October 2010. It was sponsored jointly by the Freud Museum and Media and the Inner World, a research network which explores the role of emotions and ideas of therapy in popular culture within the UK. During the conference, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, academics, programme makers and presenters discussed the function and ethics of TV in the modern world. As still the most common form in which images and narratives are transmitted, they asked how TV functions intrapsychically and interpersonally and what its significance might be for psychotherapy. The opening discussion on Friday evening featured TV comedy script-writer, Laurence Marks, who spoke with moving simplicity on how bouts of depression and despair led him firstly to his analyst's couch (who upon his death bequeathed Marks his entire works of Freud) and ultimately to the cathartic creation of many of TV's most popular sit-com characters. Marks's unassuming, almost abashed attitude to his fame was as heart-warming as his plea for the preservation of story-telling; something as old as the human race and in danger, he said, of erosion from the present ubiquity of reality television.
I experienced the following day as a veritable rollercoaster of debates, discussions, film excerpts and impassioned dialogue. Contributors included Valerie Sinason (psychoanalyst), Brett Kahr (psychotherapist and author), Carol Leader (psychotherapist, former presenter and actor), Oliver James (clinical psychologist, author and broadcaster) Dan Chambers (independent producer and former Director of Programmes, Channel 5), Richard McKerrow (producer), Tom Sutcliffe (presenter and journalist), Jonathan Phang (subject of the Marchioness Disaster Survivors' documentary1), Sue Vice (Professor of English at the University of Sheffield), Sara Ramsden (Consultant Executive Producer for the BBC) and Candid