June Pilcher: Consciousness in Modern Society: Life in the Human Zoo

Lecture by June Pilcher in english

Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 7 p.m.

Sigmund Freud Museum, Berggasse 19, 1090 Wien

 

Admission free, please register: office@freud-museum.at

 

The human brain is a fantastic biological machine. It provides us with many abilities including our every emotion, our thoughts about the nature of the universe, and our ability to do the rumba. It also gives us the desire to climb Mt. Everest 'because it is there,' the ability to think about quantum physics, and human consciousness.

Sigmund Freud is perhaps the most famous of the many philosophers and psychologists who have attempted to explain human consciousness. The effort continues today using a greater understanding of the mammal brain and particularly of the human brain. The purpose of the current presentation is to examine how the current theories about the human brain relate to earlier theories about the brain and mind and how our feelings of consciousness affect our ability to function in the world that we have created for ourselves – the human zoo.

Dr. June J. Pilcher is currently Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis for 2011-2012 at the Sigmund Freud Museum and at the University of Vienna. She earned her Ph.D. in Biopsychology from the University of Chicago in 1989. She served as a research psychologist for three years in the US Army at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, DC before beginning her academic career at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. Dr. Pilcher joined the faculty at Clemson University in August 2001. She was promoted to full professor in 2005 and was awarded an Alumni Distinguished Professorship in 2009. Dr. Pilcher’s research on the effects of stress and fatigue has been funded for over 15 years by several national agencies including the Federal Railroad Administration and the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland. Her other interests include teaching and training in a non-competitive, traditional martial art and rescuing ex-racing greyhounds. She has received numerous awards for her research and her work with students, including the Bradley Award for Mentoring in Creative Inquiry at Clemson University and being named as a Fellow in the Association for Psychological Science in 2010.

An Event by the Sigmund Freud Foundation in cooperation with the Austrian-American Educational Commission