Thursday group Training Programme 2023-2024
Autumn Term 2023
Laura Chernaik
5, 12, 19 October
Field Theory
These three seminars will focus on the Latin American relationalist psychoanalytical theory and practice, Field Theory. This approach to psychoanalysis moves from the intrapsychic, ie, what is ‘within’ the mind, to the interpsychic, that is, what is between two (or more) subjects. History and culture thus become central. Each seminar is based around two central readings: one Field Theory and one history.
In Seminar 1 we look at the Field Theorists’ approach to ‘transference and countertransference’ and what they call the ‘bastion’, a way of understanding ‘impasse’ and psychic change (‘The Analytic Situation’). Our history text for this seminar focuses on the clinic—Elisabeth Danto’s essay on the Schloss Tegel. (Simmel’s essays about work with patients in this clinic are on PepWeb). Seminar 2 continues our focus on the transferential field and the bastion, looking at how the Barangers and Mom draw on and critique Freud, Klein, Heimann and Issacs, Rosenfeld, and Lacan (‘Process and non-process’). For history, we look at Laurence Kahn’s essay on Hartmann, a key figure in the move, in the Americas, to so-called ‘Classical’ Freudianism and also towards Ego Psychology. Towards the end of ‘Process and non-process’, the Barangers and Mom return to Strachey and his idea of the ‘mutative interpretation’. Seminar 3 (‘The mind of the analyst’) focuses on listening and interpretation, focusing on ‘the point of urgency’, of ‘emergence’. For history, we look at Marie Langer’s article about her work in Nicaragua.
Also, in the background, there is a key text, Heinrich Racker’s 1968 Transference and Countertransference (on PepWeb). Marie Langer’s introduction to Racker’s book discusses the historical context: the Shoah and migration to the Americas.
Field Theory is influenced by Kleinian, Lacanian, and post-Lacanian approaches to psychoanalysis. The so-called ‘Classical Freudians’ argued that there was a linear development culminating in an Oedipal phase (the ‘genetic approach’, see the 1945 essay by Hartmann and Kris). Lacan, Green and Laplanche argued that we should return to Freud’s non-linear conception of psychic time, ‘nachtraglichkeit’. Laplanche argues that we should translate this into French as ‘apres-coup’ or, in English, ‘afterwardsness’, since Strachey’s English rendering, ‘deferred-action’, is misleadingly linear.
Seminar 1: Required reading: Field Theory:
Madeleine and Willy Baranger, (2008), The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field, Int. J. Psychoanal. 89: 795-826 PepWeb
And, on history and culture:
Elizabeth Danto, (2009). ‘Perfect in its Principles’: Psychoanalytic Praxis at Ernst Simmel’s Schloss Tegel, Psychoanal. Cult. Soc., (14)(4):337-349 PepWeb
Recommended reading, Seminar 1:
Leon Grinberg, Marie Langer, David Liberman, and Genevieve De Rodrigué (1967). The Psycho-Analytic Process Int. J. Psychoanal., (48):496-503 PepWeb
Elizabeth Danto, (2007), Freud’s Free Clinics, Columbia UP
Aída Golcman, (2012). The Experiment of the Therapeutic Communities in Argentina: The Case of the Hospital Estévez, Psychoanal. Hist., 14 (2):269-283 PepWeb
Further reading:
Racker, H (1968) Transference and Countertransference Pep-Web
Seminar 2: Required reading:
Madeleine Baranger, Willy Baranger, and Jorge Mario Mom, (1964). Process and non-process in analytic work,Int. J. Psychoanal. 64: 1-15 PepWeb
Laurence Kahn, (2023). Hartmann: Logos against bios, Chapter 7 in What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis, Routledge
Seminar 2, Recommended reading:
Hartmann, H and Kris, E. (1945), The genetic approach in psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 1: 11-30. PepWeb
Laurence Kahn, (2023). What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis, Routledge
Russel Jacoby, (1983), The Repression of Psychoanalysis, Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians. Chicago UP.
Adrienne Harris, ed. (2023). The Emigre Analysts and American Psychoanalysis. Routledge.
Seminar 3: Required reading
Madeleine Baranger, (1993), The mind of the analyst: from listening to interpretation, Int. J. Psychoanal., 74: 15-24 PepWeb
Marie Langer (1989). Psychoanalysis without the couch, Free Associations, (1)(15):60-66 PepWeb
Seminar 3, Recommended reading:
Giuseppe Civitarese, and Antonino Ferro, (2013). The Meaning and Use of Metaphor in Analytic Field Theory, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 33(3):190-209 PepWeb
Hayden White, (1999), Freud’s tropology of dreaming, in Figural Realism, Johns Hopkins
Further reading:
About Madeleine and Willy Baranger and the River Plate approach to psychoanalysis:
Online:
https://herder.com.mx/en/autores-writers/willy-baranger
(On Willy Baranger)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207578.2019.1644516
(Article on Madeleine Baranger)
PepWeb:
Beceiro, A. M. (2005) Identifying marks of Latin American psychoanalysis: Towards the definition of a River Plate model. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 86:1559-1572
Maldonado, J. L. (2022) Madeleine and Willy Baranger’s Contribution to Psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 103:872-889
(Embargoed as it’s so recent but we could get a copy)
Cassorla, R. M. (2005) From bastion to enactment: The ‘non-dream’ in the theatre of analysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 86:699-719
Vinocur-Fischbein, S. (2005) Oneiric activity and the analytical process: A semiotic perspective on Willy Baranger’s theory of dreams. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 86:1329-1352
Ricardo Bernardi and Beatriz De León De Bernardi, (2012), The Concepts of Vínculo and Dialectical Spiral: A Bridge between Intra- and Intersubjectivity, Psychoanal. Q., (81)(3):531-564
De Leon de Bernardi, B, (2000). The Countertransference: A Latin American View. Int. J. Psychoanal. 81: 331-351
‘The genetic approach vs afterwardsness’:
Hartmann, H and Kris, E. (1945), The genetic approach in psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 1: 11-30. PepWeb
André Green, (2004). Thirdness and Psychoanalytic Concepts Psychoanal. Q., (73)(1):99-135 PepWeb
Jean Laplanche, (1999). Notes on apres-coup, in Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man. IiT
Jean Laplanche, (2017). Apres-coup, Problematiques VI, UiT
This critique/return to Freud influenced the reception of Klein outside of the UK:
Stonebridge and Phillips, (1998), Reading Melanie Klein, Routledge.
Phillis Grosskurth, (1986). Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work, Aronson.
Thomas Ogden, (1990, 1986). The Matrix of the Mind: Object Relations and the Psychoanalytical Dialogue. Karnac Books.
Some key writings about transference and countertransference:
Sigmund Freud, (1911-1915), Papers on Technique, SE 12 PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1930). The importance of symbol formation in the analysis of the ego. PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1949). Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1952).The origins of transference PepWeb
Melanie Klein, (1956). A Study of Envy and Gratitude (not on PepWeb but in
The Selected Melanie Klein, ed Juliet Mitchell, (1986). Free Press)
Heimann, P. (1961). On Counter-transference. International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 31:81-84 (1961-1962). PepWeb
Issacs, S (1948). The Nature and Function of Phantasy, Int. J. Psychoanal. 29:73-97 (1950). PepWeb
Strachey, J (1934). The nature of the therapeutic action of psycho-analysis. Int. J. Psychoanal. 15:127-59. PepWeb
Eizirik C.L. (2007). On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 76:1463-1478. PepWeb
Kris, E., (1956). On some vicissitudes of insight in psychoanalysis. Int. J. Psychoanal.37 (6): 445-455 PepWeb
Lacan, J. (1953) The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis, in Ecrits, Tavistock 1977.
Lacan, J (1955) Variations on the standard treatment, in Ecrits, Tavistock 1977.
Lacan, J (1958) The direction of the treatment, in Ecrits, Tavistock 1977.
Meltzer, D, (1967), The Psycho-analytical process Pep-Web
Ogden, T, (1994) The analytical third, Int. J. Psychoanal. 75:3-19 PepWeb
Racker, H (1968) Transference and Countertransference Pep-Web
Rosenfeld, H (1987) Impasse and Interpretation PepWeb
Barbara Cawdron
26 Oct, 2 & 9 Nov
Psychoanalysis in Practice
In these three weeks the aim is to put the focus of our attention onto the context in which we are practicing psychoanalysis. The seminars are an invitation to share our experiences and to think together about what the impact of where we practice is on how we practice. This would include thinking about how the unconscious operates within organisational frameworks and institutional settings, and how that may vary according to the stated task of that organisation. We can also think about some of the differences between working in an organisation and working in private practice. Please bring your own experiences and observations of the settings in which you practice psychoanalysis to enrich and enliven our discussion. The structure of the seminars and any reading will be given nearer the time.
Training Weekend
18 & 19 November
James O’Neill
Against Self-Criticism: a Buddhist reading of Adam Phillip’s seminal paper
“…how has it come about that we are so bewitched by our self-hatred, so impressed and credulous in the face of our self-criticism, as unimaginative as it usually is? And why is it so akin to a judgement without a jury.” AGAINST SELF-CRITISCISM”, Adam Phillips, 2015
Failing to have what the Buddhist’s call Maitri, that is the inability to hold one’s own aliveness with kindness, respect and joyfulness, is a common source of great suffering. Most of us, even so called seasoned therapists and analysts, are only intermittently able to hold this view of themselves. We punish ourselves in anxiety and depression, self-harm and generally self-criticise, often finding refuge in the face of this onslaught only in over-indulging, playing the victim, and/or blaming. We can be caught up in this misery for a whole lifetime. This taught course is a chance to challenge habitually negative self-views by reconnecting with our own inherent sanity, an embodied sense of trust and self-worth.
The weekend is a chance to engage with Phillip’s paper, to practice meditation, to move, to enjoy meals together and to connect in experiential dyads.
Venue: The London Shambhala Meditation Centre in Clapham.
James O’Neill, is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Buddhist teacher and author of Undressing.
Jonathan Lewis, is a health coach specializing in movement and breathing practices for health, wellbeing and resilience. Jonathan is from Roots Movement and a Director at Balance Performance Physiotherapy in Clapham.
Julien Diaz, is a dancer, teacher and graduate of Ballet Rambert. He has spent over 20 years, helping people to develop a more sustainable, intelligent and nourishing relationship with their own bodies. Using movement and dance, to navigate emotional and physical blocks, and gain a healthy and more joyful relationship with the body.
Andie Newman
23, 30 Nov, 7 Dec
Psychoanalysis: Limits & Liberation
Once you start looking for them, ideas around limits/restrictions/lines/delineations are everywhere to be found within psychoanalysis. During these three seminars, we will reflect on how limits operate within – and are essential to – the psychoanalytic approach. We will think about the frame, boundaries and ‘the rules’, but will also open up the theme to a broader exploration of the concept of limits within psychoanalysis and some of the consequences of limits/restrictions in opening up – or liberating – the space for the work of psychoanalysis to unfold.
We will look at some of Freud’s key papers on technique, where he outlines his recommendations on the necessary conditions for a psychoanalytic treatment, based crucially on his discovery of unconscious processes including, of course, transference.
SEMINAR 1
Required reading:
Freud, S. Vol. XII ‘Remembering, Repeating & Working Through’ (1912)
Suggested reading:
Freud, S. Vol. XII ‘Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis’ (1912)
Freud, S. Vol. XII ‘On Beginning the Treatment’ (1913) (pdf attached)
SEMINAR 2
Required reading:
Freud, S. Vol. XII ‘Observations on Transference Love’ (1915)
Suggested reading:
Freud, S. Vol. XVI Lecture XXVII ‘Transference’ in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III) (1916-1917)
SEMINAR 3
Required reading:
Langs, R. (2007) ‘The Limit Situation’ (pdf attached)
Young, Robert M. 1998 ‘The Analytic Frame, Abstinence & Acting Out’ (attached)
Suggested reading:
Lomas, P. 1987 The Limits of Interpretation
Spring Term 2024
Anastasios Gaitanidis
11, 18, 25 Jan, 1, 8 Feb
Death and Temporality in Lacan, Kristeva and Laplanche
The aim of these seminars is to critically engage with Lacan’s, Kristeva’s and Laplanche’s attempts to reformulate the relations between the death drive, the timelessness of the unconscious, and the movement of temporalisation involve a psychoanalytic reworking of the Hegelian criticism of Heidegger’s account of death and temporality. However, in turning to Hegel’s dialectic of recognition as a counter to the individualism of the analytic of Dasein, they do not intend to replace the latter with the former. Rather, they hope that each problematic will work on the other, contributing to a broader rethinking of both their terms. Thus, by arresting the master-slave dialectic at the moment of misrecognition, they are able to conclude that if (according to Heidegger) temporality is tied existentially to the anticipation of death, and (according to Hegel) death comes from the other, so too must time: it is (mis)recognition which temporalises time out of the fear of death.
Seminar 1
Heidegger – Death and Time
In this seminar we will critically evaluate Heidegger’s philosophical attempt to uncover the ‘meaning of being’ through the horizon of time, and how the horizon of time in turn is that of Dasein‘s Zeitlichkeit, the structure of which is ‘care’, and which is most clearly illuminated in ‘anticipatory resoluteness’, or ‘freedom for death’.6 Death is my authentic possibility, and so reveals what possibility essentially is, thus illuminating the nature of time as that which makes possible any particular possibility.7 Authentic death, then, as disclosed in anticipatory resoluteness as my essential and singular possibility, both has a meaning and is a source of meaning: the meaning of time and being.
Reading
Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Translated as Being and Time. Trans. J. McQuarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.
Gaitanidis, A. (1999). “A Critical Examination of Heidegger’s ExistentialOntological Account of Death.” In Rob Weatherill (ed.) The Death Drive: New Life for a Dead Subject? London: Rebus Press, 1999, pp. 193206.
Seminar 2
Hegel – The Dialectic of Recognition: Trial by Death
In this seminar we will examine how Hegel’s dialectic of recognition can be used to illustrate that as a self-interpreting, self-conscious being, Dasein‘s individuality cannot be derived from its anticipation of death independently of its relations to others. Rather, Dasein must first, or simultaneously, be constituted as a self-conscious being through its relations with others, in a dialectic of recognition, in order that it may become the kind of being which is capable of anticipating its death as the end towards which it is thrown, and hence of constituting itself existentially as a Being-towards-death.
Reading
Hegel, G. W. F. (1807). The Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Kojève, A. (1933-1939). Introduction á la Lecture de Hegel. Gallimard, Paris. Translated as Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. J. H. Nichols. New York: Basic Books, 1969.
Seminar 3
Lacan – Afterwardness and the Death Drive
In this seminar, we will consider how Lacan’s work on the mirror phase and the death drive seems to offer a psychoanalytic mediation of Heidegger’s and Hegel’s accounts of death and temporality. Thus, Lacan uses the idea of the death drive to provide the ontological ground for a death which is always symbolic, exploiting the structure of afterwardsness (Nachtraglichkeit) to explain the ‘lag’ between its role in the specular dialectic of the mirror phase as the source of the child’s fear of bodily damage, and the emergence of existential temporality for the child within the realm of the symbolic. The temporalisation of time for the child by the death drive, he argues, happens ‘afterwards’.
Reading
Lacan, J. (1948). ‘Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis’. In Écrits: A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977, pp. 829.
Lacan, J. (1949). ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the ‘I’ as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.’ In Écrits: A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977, pp. 17.
Lacan, J. (1953). ‘Function and Field of Speech in Psychoanalysis’. In Écrits: A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977, pp. 30113.
Lacan, J. (195354). Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique. Trans. J. Forrester. New York: Norton, 1988.
Lacan, J. (1964). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. [Seminar XI]. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1977, & Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
Seminar 4
Kristeva – Death, the Mother and the Imaginary Father
In this seminar, we will examine how Kristeva attempts to trace back the signification of death by an Imaginary Other (father) to the independence of the (m)other. It is the freedom of the (m)other, she argues, in the form of the possibility of the refusal of recognition, which brings death (and hence time) into the world of the child.
Reading
Kristeva, J. (1977). Desire in Language. A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Trans. T. S. Gora, A. Jardin, & L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1983). Tales of Love. Trans. L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
Seminar 5
Laplanche – Timelessness, Death and the Unconscious
In this final seminar, we will discuss Laplanche’s assertions that the death drive and temporality are inextricably linked with the constant process of translating, de-translating, and re-translating of the (often unconscious) messages inherent in all human relations. On this model, primary repression is nothing other than an active expulsion of something from this constant process of unification, theorisation and temporalisation which is at work first in relation to messages from the outside, and subsequently in relation to what derives from the internal ‘other’. It is precisely such an expulsion which accounts for the timelessness of the unconscious. In this sense, the death drive is in effect that ‘pure culture’ of otherness that we detect in the deepest layers of the unconscious.
Reading
Laplanche, J. & Pontalis, J. B. (1967). The Language of Psychoanalysis. Trans. D. NicholsonSmith. London: Karnac Books, 1988.
Laplanche, J. (1976). Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. Trans. J. Mehlman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Laplanche, J. (1989). New Foundations for Psychoanalysis. Trans. D. Macey. Oxford: Blackwell.
Laplanche, J. (1997). ‘The So-Called ‘Death Drive’: A Sexual Drive’. In R. Weatherill (ed.). The Death Drive: New Life for a Dead Subject? London: Rebus Press, 2000.
Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on Otherness. Edited by J. Fletcher. London: Routledge.
Peter Nevins
15, 22, 29 Feb, 7, 14 Mar
Lacan and Race
We will be exploring Lacanian readings of Race from “Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity” chapters 2 and 4 by Sheldon George. Baylor University Press, 2016. And “Lacan and Race Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory” chapters 2, 11 and 15; Edited by Sheldon George and Derek Hook; Taylor and Francis, 2022
Week 1, 15th February 2024
“Trauma and Race A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity” Chapter 2, Conserving Race, Conserving Trauma The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois
Week 2, 22nd February 2024
“Trauma and Race A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity” chapter 4, The Oedipal Complex and the Mythic Structure of Race Ellison’s Juneteenth and Invisible Man
Week 3, 29th February 2024
Lacan and Race Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, chapter 2, Pilfered pleasure: on racism as “the theft of enjoyment by Derek Hook
Week 4, 7th March 2024
Lacan and Race Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, chapter 11, Dereliction: Afropessimism, anti-blackness, and Lacanian psychoanalysis by Kareen Malone and Tiara Jackson
Week 5, 14th March 2024
Lacan and Race Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, chapter 15, Fanon’s “zone of nonbeing”: Blackness and the politics of the Real by Gautam Basu Thakur
PDFs of all papers provide through link to Dropbox folder.
Training Weekend
20 & 21 April
Clinical Approaches
Summer Term 2024
Eric Harper
25 Apr, 2, 9, 16, 23 May
Dreams
Psychoanalysis is founded upon dream work, as is the Jungian tradition. What is implied within this, the founding a movement, practice of treatment, and body of ideas, upon dream work? Consider the use of political metaphors found in Freud’s depiction of the unconscious and dreaming? Brunner (2001) argues that Freud adopts a plethora of political metaphors that present the unconscious as a microcosm which is analogous to the outer world of politics (Brunner 2001: 26). Freud presents us with ‘disguised’ political metaphors, for example, the concept of repression, which is presented as applying to a conflict within the individual’s psyche but which could equally be seen as analogous to the conflicts brought about by the nation state between the nationals and foreigner. Yet this is still to remain within a Eurocentric framework, whilst Freud’s creativity comes about due to camping on the borders (Edward Said), as both European and Non-European.
You are invited to consider the political and cultural dimensions of dream. For example consider Antze and Lambek idea that, “although westerners tend to think of their memories as being uniquely theirs, as specifying singularity, this may itself be the product of specific narrative conventions and systematic omissions.” Today the body-memory is intrinsically linked to the construction of identity Body-memory is constructed via certain body-techniques through the use of “symbols, codes, artifacts, rites” which embody a particular identity and technologies of Self. We can argue that Psychoanalysis grows out a Western Technologies of Self. Foucault speaks of four kinds of technology, can these applied to the way in which psychoanalytic practice governs and disciplines the body? For example, to take but one form of the technology, sign system, the specific attributes and identifications that trace out the ‘essence’ of the dream within a signifying network clustering around the masters, signified, interpretation.
In the sessions we invite you to dream.
We would like to begin each session with you presenting a image from a dream you had. You will be encouraged to befriend your dreams during our time together.
The seminars will be facialited by Katia Houghton, Matt Lee and Eric Harper.
Session One
What kind of political subject is Freud creating and how does this creation, the demand to interpret frame therapeutic or healing potential?
To consider this question you will be invite the Freud’s Interpretation of Dream’s alongside Antze and Lambek (1996) Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory.
Primary Reading:
For the Freud reading please read VI The Dream Work and VII The Psychology of the Dream Processes in Interpretation of Dreams. For the Antze and Lambek, please read the two chapters provided, Introduction and Chapter one of Antze, P and Lambek, M (eds.). (1996). Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. London and New York: Routledge
You will be reminded of Freud’s method of dream interpretation and asked what traces of this methodology can we use today. If you are comfortable, you will work in pairs using this method on a dream you have had.
Session Two
In moving from Freud to Jung and Hillman we shall first begin by offering you a different kind of holly trinity, night, sleep and dream.
We will then discus Jung and Hillman’s criticism of Freud and the method of dream interpretation offered by them.
Primary Reading:
James Hillman (1979) Chapter 2 ‘Freud’ and Chapter 4 ‘Barriers’ and Chapter in The Dream and the Underworld pp. 23-67 and chapter 6 pp. 68-90 and pp. Harper Perennial New York. (library has hard copy. ISBN: 9780060119027)
James Hillman (1979) Chapter 6 ‘Praxis’ in The Dream and the Underworld ‘pp. 142-202. Harper Perennial New York. (library has hard copy. ISBN: 9780060119027)
Recommended Reading:
Andrew Samuels 1990 Chapter 8 ‘Dreams’ in Jung and the Post-Jungians pp. 230-240 Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. (Main Library has 3 copies. ISBN: 9780415059046)
Anthony Stevens (2001) Chapter 2 ‘Archetypes and the collective unconscious’ and Chapter 5 ‘Dreams’ in Jung: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. (Library has a hard copy. 978019285482)
Further Readings:
James Hillman (992) chapter 1 ‘Personifying or imagining Things’ in Re-visioning psychology pp. 3-50 Harper press, New York.
James Hillman (2001) Chapter 21 ‘Dreaming Outside of Ourselves’ in Where Id Was Edited by Anthony Molino and Christine Ware pp. 234-238 Continuum Books London
Session Three
We will explore the idea that the session needs to become a dream as advocated by Bion Field Theorist.
Primary Reading:
Giuseppe Civitarese Psychoanalytic Field Theory. 2023. Pages 12 to 15.
Thomas Ogden This art of psychoanalysis dreaming undreamt dreams and interrupted cries
Recommended Reading:
Ferro, A 2017 The New Analysts Guide to the Galaxy
Further Reading:
Ferro, A 2019 Psychoanalysisand Dream
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1516/D6R2-9NGF-YFJ2-5QK3?needAccess=true
Session Four
In this session we will consider Foucault and Binswanger’s engagement with dreams (with some comments on Bion).The dream as a condition of freedom.
Primary Reading:
Foucault’s Introduction to Binswanger’s Dream and Existence
Recommended Reading:
Binswanger’s text as well – its shorter than the Introduction. Binswanger’s Dream and Existence
Zollikon Seminars – protocols, collections, letters – ed. Medard Boss
Session Five
Dreaming under occupation.
In this session we will consider the metaphor of the capacity to dream under occupation by looking at different texts. This will be an open discussion following a very brief presentation of the dream as production from intersecting one to one, group and community relationships. We will consider psychoanalysis phobia and antagonism to group and community relationships. Is there gate keeping in psychoanalysis and the possibility of who is allowed to have a dream space.
You are asked to think about dreaming under colonization, capitalism, patriarchy, hetero normativity. The backdrop to this is Deleuze’s claim that to be caught in the other’s dream is to be fucked!
In working with people exposed to human rights violations and other trauma’s a key question to ask is if they are able to sleep, do you dream? This question re-surfaces a problem found in the inception of psychoanalysis, the anxiety dream. Freud’s dream book is haunted by what to do with nightmares. In thinking about COVID the question that was continually asked in a support group for key workers was if it is possible to dream in the time of COVID, a question that can be applied to those living under any form of colonial occupation. In these seminars you will return to Freud’s interpretation of dreams.
Key question. To engage the dream world, is it more useful to befriend or interpret a dream?
Suggested Readings:
https://youtu.be/Klhi6S6G-OY?si=oAgcB19W4vcGDitg
Bifo Berardi, The third unconscious
Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi Psychoanalysis Under Occupation
Marie Langer 1989 praxis pp 157-192 theory 135-156 From Vienna To Buenos Aires in From Vienna to Managua: Journey of a Psychoanalyst. 1989. London pp 33-90 Free Association Books. (Main Library Collection – ISBN 9781853430565)
I’ve provided an article by Cynthia Gabbay (2020) – (Jewish) Women’s Narratives of Caring and Medical Practices During the Spanish Civil War – it gives a good sample of the intention of Langer’s autobiography.
We recommend this 55 minute documentary from 2021 – Chasing the Revolution – about Marie Langer: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/documentaries/chasing-the-revolution-marie-langer-psychoanalysis-and-society/
Barry Watt
6, 13, 20, 27 June
Trauma Wars: Politics, History, Clinical Disputes
On the contemporary mental health scene trauma reigns triumphant, having conquered all before it. Long said to have been unforgivably neglected by psychoanalysis ever since Freud scandalously abandoned the Seduction Theory and inaugurated a turn toward the investigation of psychic reality and unconscious fantasy at the expense of acknowledging ‘real-world’ catastrophes and ordeals, this situation is now definitively reversed. In the majority non-psychoanalytic mental health world, the centrality of psychic reality and unconscious fantasy has been swept away as, at best, pseudoscientific speculation and, at worst, potentially deeply damaging to patients. In its place, a powerfully renewed positivism has arisen, emphasising the capacity for the impact of concrete events to bypass the subject’s systems of psychical representation and act directly, without mediation, upon their neurobiology. This revolution has been widely celebrated by practitioners and survivors alike, with books such as Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Bassel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score regularly topping numerous international non-fiction bestseller lists.
Supported by an ever-expanding body of empirical research, this physicalist and literalist account of trauma has far-reaching implications for clinical technique. It also has significant consequences for the cultural politics of trauma, widely welcomed by many patient-activists and survivor-advocates. Psychoanalysis’s emphasis on the role of fantasy and the identification of the subject with the traumas they survive inevitably leads to thorny questions around the validity of memory and the veracity of testimony. If memory is always entangled with fantasy, how can we know if survivors are not, unwittingly, exaggerating what happened to them, fabricating it altogether or that the events they recall aren’t a by-product of therapeutic suggestion? How can survivors successfully bring perpetrators to account or seek legal redress and public recognition for the atrocities committed against them, if fact and fantasy cannot be disentangled? The literalist and positivist account of trauma sidesteps such tricky philosophical and political issues, by restoring the survivor to the place of a reliable witness whilst simultaneously exonerating them from the suspicion of any ‘complicity’ or ‘co-creation’ in the suffering they experience following horrendous events that befall them.
The aim of this series of seminars is to introduce trainees to some of the central debates underpinning the contemporary ‘return to trauma’, enabling them to critically situate themselves in the philosophical, political, and clinical disputes surrounding the concept.
*PDFs will be supplied of all reading, apart from Moses and Monotheism that is available on
PEP Web*
Seminar 1: Two Models of Trauma: Freudian Origins
Leys, R. (2000). ‘Freud and Trauma’, in Trauma: A Genealogy, University of Chicago Press.
Torok, M., and Rand, N. (1997). ‘Neutralizing Constructive Criticism: Freud Faced with Ferenczi’s Research on Trauma’, in Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis, Harvard University Press.
Seminar 2: Mimetic & Anti-Mimetic Models
Leys, R. (2000). ‘Imitation Magic: Sandor Ferenczi and Abram Kardiner on Psychic Trauma’, in Trauma: A Genealogy, University of Chicago Press
Leys, R. (2000). ‘The Hysterical Lie: Ferenczi and the Problem of Simulation’, in Trauma: A Genealogy, University of Chicago Press.
Leys, R. (2000). ‘The Science of the Literal: The Neurobiology of Trauma’, in Trauma: A Genealogy, University of Chicago Press.
Seminar 3: A Laplanchean Solution? The Temporality of Trauma
Fletcher, J. (2013). ‘The Afterwardsness of Trauma and the Theory of Seduction’, in Freud and the Scene of Trauma, Fordham University Press.
Fletcher, J. (2013). ‘Memory and the Key of Fantasy’, in Freud and the Scene of Trauma, Fordham University Press.
Torok, M., and Rand, N. (1997). ‘The Concept of Psychical Reality and Its Traps’, in Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis, Harvard University Press.
Seminar 4: Memory Wars: The Cultural Politics of Trauma & the Social Construction of Diagnoses
Hacking, I. (1996). ‘Memory Sciences, Memory Wars’, in Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, ed. Antze, P. and Lambek, M., Routledge.
Hacking, I. (2002). ‘Making Up People’, in Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press.
Kenny, M.G. (1996). ‘Trauma, Time, Illness, and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Traumatic Memory’, in Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, ed. Antze, P. and Lambek, M., Routledge.
Seminar 5: The Transmission of Collective Traumas
Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays, SE: 23 [We will be looking at selected excerpts]
Sanfelippo, L. (2023). ‘On Collective Traumas: The Persistence and Transmission of Past Experiences (1913 and 1939)’, in Trauma, Psychoanalysis and History, Routledge.