Dori Laub, Psychoanalysis and Testimony — Invoking Presence Out of Absence

This two-day conference—held in person in Vienna, Austria, and partially available online via Zoom—is a collaboration between Yale Library’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, the Sigmund Freud Museum, and the Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies in Vienna.

The event marks the 45th anniversary of Dori Laub and Laurel Vlock’s first videorecording of Holocaust survivors in New Haven in 1979. The conference brings together international scholars, psychoanalysts, filmmakers and archivists. At the center of the interdisciplinary discussion are the contributions of eyewitness reports and psychoanalysis in order to make the Holocaust and its unimaginable consequences for the human psyche understandable. Other topics include Jewish history and culture and their destruction.

Thurs., March 14, 7 p.m. (in person and via Zoom)
Lecture: “Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish” by Naomi Seidman (in English), moderated by Daniela Finzi and Stephen Naron

Fri., March 15, 1 to 2:30 p.m. (in person only)
Lecture and film screening (in English): “Dori Laub and the Fortunoff Video Archive: An Introduction” by Stephen Naron and screening of The Listener, a film about Dori Laub’s work and life by Ohad Ofaz

Fri., March 15, 3 to 5 p.m. (in person only)
Panel discussion (in English): “Dori Laub, Psychoanalysis and Testimony,” a conversation with Françoise Davoine , Amit Pinchevski and Sonja Knopp , moderated by Jeanne Wolff Bernstein