The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind

The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind

Broadcast: 25 October, 2022

The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind (2022), is the latest book by philosopher and historian, Noga Arikha. The book focuses on the interconnection between our bodies and our minds, particularly at moments of great psychical difficulty. Her studies are based upon the stories of neuropsychiatric patients and embark upon an exploration of the brain, the self, dementia and medicine.

The discussion for the Freud Museum was framed around similar themes. The author speaks about her examinations with patients of the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, and their symptoms, alongside her experience of her own mother developing Alzheimer’s Disease.

Through these observations, she searches for meaning in science as she investigates how deeply interconnected our minds and bodies are.

The discussion was guided by author and former Chair of the Freud Museum, Lisa Appignanesi.

Speakers bios

Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. The author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (2007), she is associate fellow of the Warburg Institute and honorary fellow of the Center for the Politics of Feelings, London, and research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. She is based in Florence, Italy. nogaarikha.com

Lisa Appignanesi OBE is a prize-winning writer, novelist, cultural commentator. She was President of English PEN, Chair of the Freud Museum London, and until 2020 Chair of the Royal Society of Literature of which she is now a vice-president. Her non-fiction includes Everyday Madness, Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness, All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion, the prize-winning Mad Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800; Freud’s Women (with John Forrester) and a biographical portrait of Simone de Beauvoir.

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