Why Freud Still Matters – The Talking Cure in the Digital Age

People come to therapy when something no longer works, hoping that someone who is “supposed to know” will listen and help them return to a time when things did work. In this talk, psychoanalyst Christos Tombras revisits Sigmund Freud’s great invention, the “Talking Cure”, tracing its development from 19th-century studies of hysteria and early attempts at hypnosis, to today’s world pushing for quantifiable, clear-cut solutions to problems that are assumed to be equally quantifiable and clear-cut.

Drawing on Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Tombras argues that while the mind is a product of the brain, it cannot be reduced to mere neurology; instead, it comprises complex networks of psychic events shaped by language — not as a neutral system of meanings, but as a material force that structures experience from the outside in. The singularity of a patient’s history and experience is too often overlooked — a real challenge for modern “evidence-based” clinical practice. Ultimately, the talk asks what the Talking Cure can still offer in a century that would rather scan the brain than listen to the patient.

Christos Tombras, PhD, is a London-based Lacanian supervising psychoanalyst and lecturer with a special interest in continental philosophy and its dialogue with psychoanalysis, about which he has written and presented extensively. He has a background in experimental, non-narrative cinema. His most recent book is False Negatives: Tilted Takes on a World in Flux (L2U Publishing, 2025); His latest film is Three Colours (30 mins, 2024).

Daniel Jeffreys and Sayuri Higashi tell you more about what you can expect on the day: