Ancient Greek tragedy has long provided potent material for psychoanalysts to use in illuminating how the human mind works and interacts with the world. Yet an ongoing preoccupation with the individual hero, and the analytic encounter between two individuals (therapist/patient) misses one crucial element that was present in every single ancient Greek drama - the chorus. In this seminar I ask how the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion’s ideas of ‘Container and Contained’ might be used to unsettle entrenched conceptions of the function of the ancient Greek chorus. In doing so we can appreciate the value in the chorus’ blurred, non-linear, paradoxical, plural view of time, place, and the world.

Speaker:
Dr Lucy C. Jackson is Associate Professor in Classics (Ancient Greek Literature) at Durham University. 
Her research interests include Greek drama in the classical period, particularly Greek tragedy and Greek choral performance. Her most recent monograph is The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE , published in 2020 by Oxford University Press.
Dr Jackson comes to the ANU as the 2023 HRC-Centre for Classical Studies Visiting Fellow.