English Speaking Weekend Conference 2025

Listening to Antigone

The figure of Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, is the focus of the 2025 English-Speaking Conference. The final play in Sophocles’ Theban trilogy centres on Antigone, child of the incestuous union between Oedipus and Jocasta. The tragedy unfolds in the wake of civil war as Antigone resolves to bury her dead brother, in defiance of her uncle Creon’s prohibition. Sophocles’s play weaves together a number of psychoanalytic concerns: transgenerational trauma, femininity, the sibling axis, grief and the obstacles to mourning, masochism and death. Sophocles confronts us with the tragic consequences of turning a deaf ear. Our challenge now is to listen to Antigone, to hear her story, and what it brings to a contemporary psychoanalysis.

Speakers: Catherine Chabert, Rosemary Davies, Joshua Durban, Denis Flynn, Angela Joyce, and Michael Parsons

Chairs: Jan Abram, Liz Allison, Margaret Rustin

Friday 10th October - Sunday 12th October 2025

Hybrid: at the Institute of Psychoanalysis & Regent's University London, Inner Circle, NW1 4NS or Online

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS: The English Speaking Weekend Conference is open to members and candidates of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and its component societies, and also to members of the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA), the European Psychoanalytic Federation (EPF) and full British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) registrants.

Psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, who are not members of these organisations may register if supported by an IPA member. A brief supporting letter from the IPA member should be sent to outreach@iopa.org.uk before registering for the conference.

This conference will be recorded and available to view for 2 weeks.

Early Bird rates are available until June.

For the preview, programme, and registration, click here