Eating the White Snake

A Talk by Catherine Bygott (with Ben Haggarty)

Servants, kings, forbidden food, talking animals & the repayment of debts… Can these fairytale components be a mirror for the human subconscious? How do we relate to the archetypal characters in stories? What is it in stories that we find so appealing…?

In the fourth of the Crick Crack Club talks on myth and meaning, Jungian analyst Catherine Bygott suggests that it is the capacity of stories to reflect a deep core of truth about our humanity, that makes stories so compelling.

Tonight’s talk is a chance to get a glimpse of a renowned psychiatrist’s map of the soul, through the lens of a grown-up Grimms fairytale – The White Snake (retold this evening by Ben Haggarty) – and the patterns, metaphors and symbols found lurking within it.

After the story and talk, it’ll be your chance to talk, question, muse and mull over what you’ve heard, what you think, what you agree with and what you don’t – whilst drinking wine and nibbling nibbles.

TIMETABLE
7.00pm             Talk begins
8.15pm             Audience Wine & Conversation (timing may vary)
9.15pm             Event finishes (timing may vary, depending on how much chattering goes on)

Creator of some of the best known psychological concepts, Jung (1875 – 1961), has been influential in psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, and literature. His outlook was a theory of powerful collective sub-consciousness, containing a hidden objective knowledge which we all know, but don’t know that we know.