John Forrester, 'Psychoanalysis and Cambridge Scientists in the 1920s'

Scientific Cambridge proved to be a surprisingly receptive environment for the reception of Freudian ideas in the 1920s. Botany students received an education in psychoanalysis from Arthur Tansley, founder of ecology, from the 1910s onwards. J. D. Bernal, later the grandfather of DNA, was a fervent believer in the revolutionary implications of Freud's ideas as was the scientific wing of Bloomsbury - Ramsey, Penrose, Keynes. The lecture will explore the sources and implications of this eager receptivity.