Being human/being queer: a Lacanian perspective on queer praxis – Anne Worthington

Wed 22 February 2017, 17:00 – 18:30. Room: 4N.6.1, University of Essex Colchester Campus, Colchester. CO4 3SQ

Abstract: The engagement between queer theory and psychoanalysis offers a certain promise. Albeit from radically different standpoints, both disciplines foreground questions of subjectivity, sexuality and desire. The paper suggests the potentiality of a more rigorous engagement between queer theory and a psychoanalysis that is informed by Lacan’s “re-reading” of Freud by which queer praxis can be read as solutions to the problem of being human and by which prevalent notions of sex and sexuality can be challenged and undermined. Through a brief exploration of some of the history of that engagement and a reading of some published psychoanalytic clinical case histories, the paper seeks to demonstrate that Lacan’s nosological framework subverts the pathologization of non-normative sexual practices and identities. It also suggests that the certain promise of the engagement between psychoanalysis and queer theory is one that seeks to deconstruct the ideals and imperatives of heteronormativity and their lethal effects.

Anne Worthington (PhD) is a psychoanalyst, practicing in South London. She is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University. She is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and the Guild of Psychotherapists, and contributes to their training programmes, and is a member of the College of Psychoanalysts – UK. She recently published “Beyond Queer” in Hysteria Today, ed. Anouchka Grose, London: Karnac, 2016

Islamic Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalytic Islam – College of Psychoanalysts UK 2017 CONFERENCE

Islamic Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalytic Islam – College of Psychoanalysts UK 2017 CONFERENCE

International Conference, University of Manchester, 26-27 June 2017

This international conference organised by the College of Psychoanalysts – UK with the support of Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix and CIDRAL University of Manchester promises to function as a site for dialogue. It will be an opportunity to speak across the many conflicting traditions of work that comprise psychoanalysis, and of different interpretations of Islam and what it is to be a Muslim today.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

FETHI BENSLAMA (Psychoanalyst, Professor of Clinical Psychopathology at the University Paris-Diderot, Head of Department (UFR) of Psychoanalytic Studies, author of Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam, University of Minnesota Press, 2009) will speak on ‘The contemporary mutations of subjectivity in Islam’.

GOHAR HOMAYOUNPOUR (Psychoanalyst, member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, training and supervising psychoanalyst of the Freudian Group of Tehran, lecturer at Shahid Beheshti University, author of Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran, MIT Press, 2013) will speak on ‘Islam … the new modern erotic’.

AMAL TREACHER KABESH (Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, author of Postcolonial Masculinities: Emotions, Histories and Ethics, Ashgate, 2013 and Egyptian Revolutions: Repetition, Conflict, Identification, Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming) will speak on ‘Itjihad: The necessity of thinking anew’.

Registration. Registration for the conference is now open. The cost will be £85.00 (£35.00 for fully paid up members of the College of Psychoanalysts and for trainees, £25.00 for the retired/unwaged/students). It is possible that there will be full bursary arrangements for postgraduate students of the Universities of Manchester, Lancaster and Liverpool, subject to local funding). To register please make a bank transfer to ‘The College of Psychoanalysts (UK)’, account number 41482566, sort code 09 06 66, IBAN: GB27ABBY09066641482566, BIC: ABBYGB2LANB. Please notify us that you have made the transfer by email to cpukconference@gmail.com

Please let us know about any dietary requirements. The cost of registration will cover refreshments and lunches.

Funding. Although we do not have any funding available to offer assistance with travel or accommodation, we are able to provide letters of acceptance of abstracts and certificates of attendance, which we hope would help many of you secure funding and accommodation independently.

Adjacent events. The conference will run from Monday morning 26 June to Tuesday late afternoon 27 June, so we advise that you arrive at least by Sunday 25 June. On the following day, Wednesday 28 June, there will be an Asylum: Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry open conference. Asylum will be celebrating over thirty years of the magazine in Manchester, and we know some of you will want to attend. That Asylum conference has an open public call for papers and workshops, and there are details of this and registration details at http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/ticket/asylum-action-and-reaction#.V35VqDWpCM8, and the Asylum conference email for more details is: asylumconference2017@gmail.com

Accomodation. The University of Manchester Chancellors Hotel which has rooms available from 40 pounds per night, http://www.chancellorshotel.co.uk/ and Luther King House which has rooms from 35 pounds per night, http://www.lutherkinghouse.co.uk/. The conference registration does not include accommodation.

Abstracts and papers. This international conference brings together scholars – including in critical psychology, cultural studies and political theory – and practitioners of psychoanalytic and group-analytic approaches to psychotherapy and counselling. We will explore the relationship between the clinic and culture in the contemporary world focusing on the challenge that Islam poses for psychoanalytic theory and practice, and the response of psychoanalysts to Islamic theory and practice. The conference locates this critical project in the context of a series of historical transformations in the development of Freudian and post-Freudian work, transformations that continue to underpin psychoanalytic debate. The first stage began with a question about the role of Judaism and Jewish history in the formation of Freud’s own work and dialogue with his followers and co-researchers in central Europe. The second continues with a question over the supposed Christianisation of psychoanalysis after Freud and the secularisation of the practice in the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition in the West. The third stage follows a time of the globalisation and fragmentation of the psychoanalytic movement, resistance to colonisation and post-colonial critique, and is one in which we might either conceive of the end of psychoanalysis or its renewal with Islam. In each case the crucial questions concern the form of each rather than the content of their ideas about reality. This is a call for proposals for papers to be presented at a conference on the following themes:

In place of attempts to render Islam amenable to psychoanalytic interpretation, how might we understand the significance of Islam for psychoanalysis today?
What might an ‘Islamic psychoanalysis’ look like that accompanies and questions the forms of psychoanalysis that developed in the West?
What might a ‘psychoanalytic Islam’ look like that speaks for while perhaps even transforming the forms of truth that Islam produces?
What are the lessons of the encounter between psychoanalysis and Islam for clinical practice and cultural critique in and beyond the West?
What bearing does this debate have on the identity of those positioned as ‘Muslims’ or ‘psychoanalysts’ in times of Islamophobia and professionalisation?

Abstracts of between 200 and 250 words together with an indication of the conference theme to be addressed should be submitted to the organisers before 31 January 2017: cpukconference@gmail.com

We will be in contact with those who have submitted abstracts by the end of February, and will then ask for papers which should be submitted in English by the end of May, which we then plan to circulate to those attending to facilitate discussion at the conference.

We will be publishing a number of papers from the conference, in a special issue of the online open-access journal ‘CUSP: Critical Cultures and Cultural Critiques in Psychology’ www.cuspthejournal.com

We have space in University of Manchester booked for the event, and this means that we will limit numbers attending. Please register sooner rather than later to secure a place at the conference.

First CFAR & Bristol University Public Lectures of 2016: Transference

CFAR-Bristol

CFAR In Association With Bristol University 2016/17

Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.

Public lecture 1: TRANSFERENCE
with Dr Anne Worthington,
Psychoanalyst and Senior Lecturer,
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University

Four public seminars on the topics of transference, the unconscious, repetition and the drive will take place throughout the year. No prior knowledge of Lacan is assumed and the seminars will all include clinical examples involving the kind of problems and questions common to diverse currents in contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

Date: October 29, 2016
Attendance Fee: £20 students £15
Venue: Merchant Venturers Building
Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UB
Time: 11am – 12.30pm
Registration: 10.00am on the day

Please address enquiries to
Lesel Dawson at Lesel.Dawson@bristol.ac.uk
Jill Brown at mjillbrown@hotmail.com
or Elizabeth O’Loughlin at elizaariadne@blueyonder.co.uk

Almost everyone in Buenos Aires is in Therapy – Olivia Goldhill – Quartz

[Click here to read the original on qz.com]

Therapy is a big part of life in Argentina. The country has the highest number of psychologists per capita in the world, with around 198 psychologists per 100,000 inhabitants, an estimated 46% of whom are in Buenos Aires. Since Argentinian culture sees therapy as important to self-development and positive health, there’s plenty of demand to meet that supply. But rather than attending cognitive or behavioral treatment, most people are seeking a very specific form of therapy: Psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud in the 19th century, makes use of fantasies, dreams, and free association speech to uncover repressed ideas in the unconscious and help the patient gain new insights into their emotions and experiences.

Mariano Plotkin, history professor at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero and the leading authority on the history of psychoanalysis in Argentina, explains that although psychoanalysis was known in Buenos Aires since the 1910s, it experienced a cultural boom after dictatorial President Juan Perón was overthrown in 1955.

“That opened a moment of fast cultural modernization in Argentina,” says Plotkin. “There was a big reception of anything coming from Europe. Psychoanalysis was seen by many as a emancipatory doctrine.”

Certain well-known psychologists such as Enrique Pichon-Rivière had immigrated to Argentina, so the country had a strong foundation of psychoanalytic knowledge, adds Andrew Lakoff, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California who has conducted research on psychoanalysis in Argentina. Among Buenos Aires’ educated middle-class, there was a lot of prestige associated with self-improvement.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Lakoff says, psychoanalysis became not just a “prestigious way of understanding and forming oneself,” but also linked to a leftist political ideology.

During the cultural suppression of dictatorships during the 1970s, psychoanalysis was seen as subversive. A group called Federación Argentina de Psiquiatras linked psychoanalysis with Marxist theory; this group was targeted by the military and, Lakoff says, psychoanalysts struggled to find jobs or publish their work. “With the return to democracy in 1983, it was again prestigious because it was associated with resistance to totalitarianism,” he adds.

Another key moment for psychoanalysis in Argentina, says Plotkin, was when the intellectual Oscar Masotta introduced the ideas of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to Argentina with a series of lectures and books in the 1970s.

“If you talk about psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires today, you’re really talking about Lacan French psychoanalysis. Argentine intellectual elites were always very receptive to everything coming from France,” he explains. “The infatuation with French culture is a broad phenomenon along Latin America, except that here [in Buenos Aires] there’s a larger population of middle-class who had access to these cultural artifacts.”

Indeed, many Argentina universities today have huge psychology departments, nearly exclusively devoted to the study of various aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The academic focus on this field of psychology has helped maintain a steady supply of professional psychoanalysts. Lakoff explains that psychoanalysts don’t need a medical degree and, after getting an undergraduate degree of psychology, can begin training to be a psychoanalyst.

Though some psychoanalysts are pricey, there are plenty of inexpensive options available, with the cheapest therapy sessions costing around 150 Argentinean pesos ($10.)

Psychoanalyst & Author Anouchka Grose on life, training and practice as a psychoanalyst.

Recorded at the launch event of Lambeth and Southwark MIND psychotherapy clinic, psychoanalyst and author Anouchka Grose talks with Ajay Khandelwal about her life, the difficulties that took her into analysis as well as her subsequent training and practice as a psychoanalyst.

Darian Leader on Psychosis introduced by Ajay Khandelwal

Introduced by Ajay Khandelwal, psychoanalyst Darian Leader gives the Lambeth and Southwark MIND Psychotherapy Clinic 2016 Annual Lecture – On Psychosis.

Therapy Wars: The Revenge of Freud – Guardian Article by Oliver Burkeman

[Click here to visit the Guardian site and read Oliver Burkeman’s article.]

Cheap and effective, CBT became the dominant form of therapy, consigning Freud to psychology’s dingy basement. But new studies have cast doubt on its supremacy – and shown dramatic results for psychoanalysis. Is it time to get back on the couch?

“…researchers at London’s Tavistock clinic published results in October from the first rigorous NHS study of long-term psychoanalysis as a treatment for chronic depression. For the most severely depressed, it concluded, 18 months of analysis worked far better – and with much longer-lasting effects – than “treatment as usual” on the NHS, which included some CBT. Two years after the various treatments ended, 44% of analysis patients no longer met the criteria for major depression, compared to one-tenth of the others.”

What is Psychoanalysis? Part 4: The Ego, the Id and the Superego – Freud Museum

IN THIS EPISODE:
A fractured self
The ego, the id and the superego
Why did Freud develop a new model?
Devils and angels
People fall ill of their moral ideals
A horse and a rider
The ego is like a politician
The goal of analysis is to stop the ego being so silly

More info: www.freud.org.uk/education/

What is Psychoanalysis? Part 3: Oedipus Complex – Freud Museum London

Click here to see the third part of the Freud Museum introductory video series on psychoanalysis.

IN THIS EPISODE:
The emotional world of children
His Majesty the Baby
The mother as first love object
Is it sexual?
Jealousy, rivalry, hatred and anxiety
The role of the father
Gender: Freud didn’t think you were just ‘born a boy’ or ‘born a girl’
There is no perfect resolution of the Oedipus complex
It marks us for life

More info: www.freud.org.uk/education/

What is Psychoanalysis? Part 2: Sexuality – Freud Museum London

Click here to see the second part of the Freud Museum introductory video series on psychoanalysis.

IN THIS EPISODE:
An enlarged concept of sexuality
Infantile sexuality
Perversion is something we’re born with
Normal and abnormal
Psychosexual stages of development: oral, anal, phallic
Repression
Sexuality and symptoms

More info: www.freud.org.uk/education/