Tag Archives: art & culture

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.

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.

What is Psychoanalysis? Part 1: Is it Weird? Freud Museum London

[Click here to view the Freud Museum video on YouTube]

Series trailer for Freud Museum introductory videos on psychoanalysis featuring interviews with analysts including John Forrester, Anne Worthington, Dany Nobus, Darian Leader, Astrid Gessert, Daniel Pick and Anouchka Grose.

Anouchka Grose: The Unconscious from Freud to Lacan

[Click here to visit the Freud Museum Site and hear the Podcast]

While the contents of the unconscious might be obscure and perplexing, when Freud spoke about ‘the unconscious’ he meant something very precise. This talk will look at Freud’s ‘discovery’ of the unconscious, and at his conceptualisation of it. It will also deal with the peculiar logic of symptom formation. From there, it will go on to look at Lacan’s notion of the language-like unconscious, showing how this was developed in accordance with Freud’s ideas.

Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, where she regularly lectures. She is the author of No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), and is the editor of ‘Hysteria Today’, a collection of essays to be published by Karnac later this year. She also writes for The Guardian and teaches at Camberwell School of Art.

Why Remember? LSE Podcast with Lisa Appignanesi, Darian Leader & Owen Sheers

[Click here to go the the LSE site and listen to the podcast.]

Speaker(s): Lisa Appignanesi, Darian Leader, Owen Sheers
Chair: Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch

Recorded on 28 February 2015.

This panel explores our relationship with our sometimes traumatic past, and asks why we should remember and what happens when we can’t remember. The discussion considers the importance of place and landscape in memory, as well as the nature of collective memory and memorialisation, particularly in the context of war.

Lisa Appignanesi (@LisaAppignanesi) is a writer, novelist and broadcaster. She is the former Chair of the Freud Museum London, the former President of English PEN and former Deputy Director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Her non-fiction includes Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors (which won the BMA Award for the Public Understanding of Science amongst other prizes), the acclaimed family memoir Losing the Dead, the classic study Freud’s Women (with John Forrester) and Simone de Beauvoir, and most recently Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. Her novels include Paris Requiem, The Memory Man and The Dead of Winter. Lisa Appignanesi was awarded the OBE in 2013.

Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a founder member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He is President of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK and Visiting Professor at the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University. He is the author of several books including: Introducing Lacan, Why do women write more letters than they post?; Freud’s Footnotes; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing, Why do people get ill?’ (with David Corfield), The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression and What is Madness? His most recent book, Strictly Bipolar was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2013.

Owen Sheers (@owensheers) has written two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill, which won a Somerset Maugham award. His verse drama Pink Mist won Wales Book of the Year and the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. His non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby. His first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. His plays include The Passion, The Two Worlds of Charlie F. and Mametz. Owen wrote and presented BBC Four’s A Poet’s Guide to Britain. He has been a NYPL Cullman Fellow, Writer in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust and Artist in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. His second novel I Saw A Man will be published by Faber in 2015

What about Me? The struggle for identity in a market-based society – by psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe

[Click here to go the Freud Museum site and hear the podcast by psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe]

Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: Poetry as Therapy

Adam Phillips: “On the one hand, psychoanalysis is practical in the sense that there is an attempt to solve a problem, or to cure somebody, or at least to address their suffering. But the other thing that psychoanalysis does is that the project is to enable somebody to speak. It’s the attempt to create the conditions in which somebody can speak themselves as fully as possible.”

[Click here to read the whole article on The Economist site]

‘Like An Open Sky’ – a documentary about the ‘Courtil’ treatment centre for children

It’s very good to hear that Mariana Otero’s acclaimed film about Le Courtil, the Lacanian-oriented treatment centre on the French-Belgium border for children, adolescents and adults with mental health problems, will be released with subtitles in the UK in October. We’ll try to see about getting a showing in Bristol somehow…

“Alysson considers her body with mistrust. Evanne spins and twists until he collapses. Amina can’t manage to make words come out of her mouth. At the border between France and Belgium there exists a special place which takes care of psychologically and socially challenged children. Day after day, the adults working there try to understand the enigma that each of these children represent and invent, case by case, without ever imposing anything, solutions that will help them live peaceful lives.”

Click the image below to watch the trailer for the film on YouTube:

The play that wants to change the way we treat mental illness

Can theatre offer a cure for psychosis? It’s unlikely – and it would be unwise for any theatre-maker even to try. What theatre can do, though, is convey the experience of psychosis: the hallucinations and delusions – often terrifying, sometimes comical – that define reality for those with schizophrenia and related conditions. [Click here to read the rest of the article on the Guardian site.]