Autumn: October 10 – December 12
Spring: January 16 – March 27
Summer: April 17 – July 3
Training weekend May 22/23
AUTUMN TERM
Transition, Change, and Uncertainty
Barbara Cawdron October 10 17 24 31. Liz Guild, clinical.
Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one – Voltaire
Bearing uncertainty is one of the most valuable things that a psychoanalyst can do with and for their patient. But even psychoanalysts can reach for certainties, a sense that somebody knows what is going on, particularly in times of great transition and change such as we are all living through. I chose this theme, or themes, partly in response to personal experiences, which became inevitably entangled with events in the wider world over the last few months. I am interested in us using the time and space of these weeks to explore these themes through and between different arenas of life – the individual, the clinic, the training group, and the wider social and political worlds.
These weeks are an invitation for pause and reflection on people’s experiences over the course of the pandemic and the lockdown, but also on other transitions such as the changes within the training group as people leave and join. With our usual markers of change, such as the Pass, disrupted, it feels an opportune time to think about what is lost, what may even be gained by such disruptions.
The reading is a mix of books and articles that have informed my thinking on this topic and through the events of the last few months. I offer them as navigational guides in our conversation. I would also like everyone to think of something pertinent to the theme that has resonated with them over these last few months. This could be some psychoanalytic writing, but it could also be a piece of art, a novel, an experience, that you are happy to share with others in the group.
Reading
Dalal, F. (2008). Against the Celebration of Diversity. BJP 24(1):4-19. (pepweb)
Freud, S. (1916). On Transience. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 303-307.
Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology in The Question Concerning Technology London Garland Publishing https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Heidegger_Martin_The_Question_Concerning_Technology_and_Other_Essays.pdf
Perini, M Panic and Pandemics https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvyxy7e9zxuo5qr/PANIC%20AND%20PANDEMICS%20-Mario%20Perini%5B2%5D.pdf?dl=0
Roustang, F. On the transmissibility of analytic theory Chapter 4 in Dire Mastery Discipleship from Freud to Lacan American Psychiatric Press Inc.
Watts, A The Philosophy of the Tao in The Art of Zen Penguin
Winnicott, D.W. (1953). Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena—A Study of the First Not-Me Possession. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 34:89-97. (pep
Pass, Endgame, Impasse
Stephen Gee and Patricia Touton-Victor, November 7 14 21
‘In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generatIon….’
T.S. Eliot ‘Four Quartets’ Part II East Coker.
We all have to go through the ending of an analysis. Or do we? What if the late Freud’s pessimism is misplaced? Why end an analytic process that is not today necessarily hostage to a notion of cure? In these seminars we will look at some of the questions raised. What does such an end consist of? Can an agreed ending truly lead to a cessation of the individual’s suffering? What are the implications for the patient and for the analyst? Along the way impasses occur in most analyses. Are these intractable obstacles or eventual opportunities for mutative interpretation?
These questions involve the analytic couple relation in the grip of problems that go to the heart of what it means to be human. We defer, we procrastinate; for what? To keep the illusion going that the transference tie in all it’s permutations will guarantee our future? And for the prospective analyst in training what happens when the analysis ends; where do his/her coordinates come from in a life of practice? Is, as Roustang contests, the transference not dissolved but simply shifted on to eternal life support in the training institution?
Reading:
Freud S ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable‘. (PEP)
Roustang F, ‘How To Make a Paranoid Laugh’, Chapter 9, ‘Transmitting Anxiety’ and Chapter 10, ‘On the End of Analysis and Self-Hypnosis as a Cure’. (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Bion W.R. ‘Attention and Interpretation’, Chapter 4, Opacity of Memory and Desire. (PEP)
Phillips A. ‘Equals’, ‘Making it Old’, (p 144 in Faber and Faber ed.)
Pontalis J.B. ‘Windows’, P.95, ‘Coming After’, (University of Nebraska Press)
Some further reading will be suggested.
Trans-generational impacts and influences in psychoanalysis.
Paul Zeal and Lyn Meyer Nov 28, Dec 5 12
‘Transgenerational’ refers to whatever acts across multiple generations. We will explore this phenomenon in our three Saturday mornings with you.
Parents and grandparents tend to feature in analytic work, carried forward in patients’ pre-occupations. Naturally, analysts are interested in these others, internalized relationships with whom largely constitute the outer ingredients of patients’ inner worlds. Yet these parents and grandparents were themselves subject in their turn, to parents and grandparents. What if the analyst holds open the whole transgenerational field of ancestors that are obscurely present in the room, on both sides of the dyad? How would this affect the process? In this systems-based transgenerational perspective, analysis has its place in the unfolding of both familial and cultural inheritance through decades, centuries, and millennia. Uncanny hauntings from recent and ancient wars, colonial and imperial (mis)adventures, sexual traumas, displacements and losses, loyalties and betrayals, ancient loves and hates, may be restaged through the dynamic unconscious/unknown in the analytic dyad. We will explore these ideas with you through discussion with some experiential practices.
Reading list:
Davoine, Francoise and Gaudilliere, Jean-Max (2004). History Beyond Trauma. New York: Other Press.
**Freud, S. (1919). ‘The “Uncanny”’, S.E., Vol 17.
**Frosh, Stephen (2013). Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hellinger, Bert (1999). Acknowledging What Is. Phoenix Arizona: Zeig, Tucker & Co.
Harari, Yuval N. (2011). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. London: Vintage.
*Laing, R.D. (1971). The Politics of the Family and Other Essays. London: Tavistock Publications.
Orange, Donna (2017) Ch. 2: ‘Historical unconsciousness and the invisible present’. In: Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics. London: Routledge.
*Valdre, Rossella (2014) ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’: An Unusual, Unconventional Film. Some Reflections on ‘Bad Boys’, between Transgenerational Projections and Socio-Cultural Influences. Int. J. Psycho-Analysis, 95 (1). Pp: 149-159.
The whole reading list is relevant and carefully chosen, but please be sure to have read the two items marked **, and also to have engaged with the two marked *.
SPRING TERM
The Sick Body
Val Parks, (Daniel Fenton clinical)
January 16 23 30, February 6 13
These seminars will explore issues associated with the experience of having a human body: born prematurely and hence dependent on care givers for an extended time; fragile and vulnerable physically. We have learned to live off our wits, but at great cost. The human body very readily succumbs to illness or pain, and these seminars seek to go beyond a simplistic translation from bodily symptom into mental expression via a psychoanalytic encounter, and posit instead a complex interaction and play of body and mind. More specific references will be given later to the passages we will be concentrating on, and scans of them will be made available to texts not on PEP.
Week 1 The perception of being a body and how it is formed
Piera Aulagnier “The Birth of the Body, Origin of a History” – link here
Elaine Scarry The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World OUP 1985. Link here
Reference will also be made to last term’s seminar on Anzieu and the skin ego.
Week 2 Why do people get ill?
Darien Leader and David Corfield Why Do People Get Ill? Penguin Books 2008
Joyce McDougall Theatres of the Body Free Association Books 1989
Jamieson Webster Conversion Disorders: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis. Columbia University Press 2019 (for background reading only)
Week 3 The experience of being ill
This week will look at one particular kind of illness: cancer. Lana Lin’s book explores Freud’s jaw cancer and the experiences of Audre Lorde and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who both suffered from breast cancer. As a starter, here is a link to a podcast by the author https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/new-books-in-psychoanalysis/id423338807?i=1000408069533
Lana Lin Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer Fordham University Press 2017
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Dialogue on Love Beacon Press 2000
Week 4 Sickness as metaphor : individual and society
Albert Camus The Plague (for background on Jacqueline Rose. “Pointing the Finger” an article on Camus. London Review of Books. Volume 42 No. 9, available online https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/jacqueline-rose/pointing-the-finger (She relates the plague to the epidemic of violence against women)
Susan Sontag Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors (1977 and 1989) Penguin Books 199
Week 5 Covid19 A week to discuss psychoanalytical articles or papers on the topic. Texts made available near the time so they are as topical as possible. Trainees are invited to contribute articles or papers they have found useful
Psychoanalysis; radicalism versus revisionism
Eric Harper February 27, March 6 13 20 27. Racheli Azgad, clinical.
These seminars are concerned with how analyst can be as alive as possible to determining ‘what a body can do’ (Spinoza) when bodies can no longer dream, play or engage with small doses of madness (Oakley).
Week 1: Resistance when trapped within a timeline
Anthony Faramelli and Eric Harper
In this seminar we will jointly construct a timeline of the ‘discovery’ of the unconscious with a view to developing an understanding its cultural and historical underpinning.
We will focus on how psychoanalytic space is framed by a timeline/history told in a certain way that consigns herstory to the voice of the patient. We will argue that unless the analytic institution can heal itself it will continue to institute self-same white male privilege. We invite you to consider the re-visioning of analytic practices of resistance as undertaken by Marie Langer, Francois Tosquelles and Franz Fanon.
Links will be made to the concepts ‘her-story’, subaltern studies and institutional analysis.
Key questions. What is at stake in constructing a history, whose history?
What is resistance?
Essential Reading:
Franz Fanon Chapter 1 ‘Concerning Violence’ and the ‘Conclusion’ in Wretched of the Earth pp. 35-94 and pp. 311-end.
Franz Fanon Chapter 2 ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ in Wretched of the Earth pp. 148-205 and 311.
Frantz Fanon ‘Introduction’, and Chapter 5 ‘The Fact of Blackness’ 109-140 and pp. 109-140 in Black Skin, White Mask. Pluto Press https://monoskop.org/images/a/a5/Fanon_Frantz_Black_Skin_White_Masks_1986.pdf
Recommended Reading:
Khalfa. J. (2018). ‘Fanon, revolutionary psychiatrist’ in Frantz Fanon Alienation and Freedom, Edited by Jean Khalfa, Robert Young, pp.167-202. Bloomsbury. London.
Frantz Fanon Chapter 25 ‘Day hospitalization in psychiatry Value and limits’ and Chapter 26 ‘Day hospitalization in psychiatry Value and limits. Part Two: doctrinal considerations in Frantz Fanon Alienation and Freedom, Edited by Jean Khalfa, Robert Young, pp. 473-494and pp. 495-509. Bloomsbury. London.
Cherki, A. (2006). Frantz Fanon: a portrait. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
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.
Suman Fernando (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Traditional Approaches to Mental Health’ and Chapter 3 ‘Background and Culture of Psychiatry’ in Mental Health, Race and Culture pp. 27-46 pp. 47-59 Red Global Press
Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro (2020) Chapter 2 ‘The invention of the unconscious’ in Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis pp. 17-52 Routledge London
Henri F Ellenberger 1970 Chapter 10 ‘The Dawn and Rise of the New Dynamic Psychiatry’ in The Discovery of the Unconscious pp. 749- 885 Basic Books New York
Week 2 Transitioning
Eric Harper and Ed Thornton
From its early inception there have been those who have tried to make the theory and practice of analysis more radical and political. We have had Marxist psychoanalysis, a prominent example being Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School. There are various traditions claiming to be radical and more recently postcolonial psychoanalysis. In practice psychoanalysis can seem like an island, so dependent on the seas and lands beyond. In its institutions and theoretical manifestations it can also be quick to exclude dissent.
Does something like schizoid analysis take us any further? Does dissent always mean excommunication as it did for Luce Irigaray or can dissent help create productive transversals?
Links will be made to the concept of ‘transversal’ and ‘transitional space’, ‘me and not-me’ and play.
Key question: Can psychoanalysis think beyond one to one relationship, beyond lack, think in terms of the production of multiplicity?
Essential Reading:
Gary Genosko (2000) ‘The life and work of Felix Guattari’ pp 46-79 in Guattari The Three Ecologies London continuum books.
Gregory Bateson – A Theory of Play and Fantasy
Margaret Little (1985) ‘Winnicott Working in Areas where of psychotic anxieties predominant.’ https://www.thesap.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/LittleM.Winnicott.Psychotic.pdf
Recommended Reading
Felix Guattari Chapter 8, Transversality in Psychoanalysis and Transversality.
Winnicott, D. (1965) Chapter 15 The Aims of Psycho-Analytical Treatment in Maturational Processes and The Facilitating Environment pp. 166-170 London: Karnac
Adam Phillips Chapter 6 ‘The Play of Interpretation’ in Winnicott pp. 138-152 Penguin books London.
Donald Winnicott (1971) Chapter 1 ‘Transitional objects and transitional phenomena’ and Chapter 3 ‘Playing’ in Playing and reality pp. 1-34 and 51-70 Routledge London.
Week 3
Bion’s conservatism; out of the debris of the past, what future?
Stephen Gee and Eric Harper
In this seminar we will undertake a close reading of chapter 5 and 6 from Bion’s the Elements of Psychoanalysis. After a consideration of the function of the Grid we will focus on the role dreams and myth as specific psychoanalytic elements.
Essential Reading:
Bion WR, Chapters 1 to 6 in ‘Elements of Psychoanalysis’. (On PEP)
Ogden T 2003. ‘On not being able to dream’ in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Volume 84, Issue 1 (PEP)
Recommended:
Attacks on Linking’ and ‘A Theory of Thinking’ Bion in Second Thoughts, pp. 93-109 and pp. 110-119 Karnac Books. London (PEP)
Dreams That Mirror the Session; Civitarese G (IJP 2006 PEP)
Civitarese, G & Ferro, A 2013 The Meaning and Use of Metaphor in Analytic Field Theory inPsychoanalytic Inquiry A Topical Journal for Mental Health Professionals Volume 33, Issue 3, Fields and Metaphoric Processes
Ferro, A. 2017. Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Volume 90, Issue 2
Giuseppe Civitarese 2015 Chapter Nine ‘Between ‘other’ and ‘other’ Merleau-Ponty as a precursor of the analytic field’ in The Analytic Field and its transformations pp. 151-169 Routledge Oxon
Vermote, R (2019) Reading Bion Routledge London.
Week 4 The analyst is the one supposed to enjoy
Chris Oakley
In this seminar Chris Oakley will share stories about his encounter with psychoanalysis and football how he remains entranced!
The seminar will also consider the overlapping liberating potential within football (play), as with psychoanalysis, there is a shadow dimension that has produced over regulation and thoughtlessness and abuse.
Eric Harper will speak about the theme of ‘enjoyment’ in supervision.
Essential Reading:
Chris Oakley 2007. Chapter 1 ‘Trench mouth’ and Chapter 8 ‘Football is Therapy’ Football Delirium Karnac, London.
Chris Oakley, Chapter 14, ‘Where Did it all go wrong?’, Chapter 14, “RD Laing 50 years since The Divided Self’ Edited by Theodor Litten and Courtenay Young pages 164-180.
Recommended:
Davy Lane 2014 ‘The Life And Death of Justin Fashanu’ https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/the-life-and-death-of-justin-fashanu/
Eric Harper; Review of Football Delirium. https://www.academia.edu/football_and_psychoanalysis
Documentary; ‘Britain’s Gay Footballers’ (parts 1 to 4) on YouTube
Documentary ‘Forbidden Games: The Justin Fashanu Story’ on Netflix
‘Plato’s Symposium’, Oxford University Press.
Week 5
Discussion of the themes and questions that have arisen in Weeks 1 – 4.
SUMMER TERM
Julie Walsh April 17 24, May 1 8 15. Barry Watt, clinical.
Trouble at the borders: narcissism, shame and paranoia.
As terms that regularly enter the clinical space, spoken by patients in their bids to understand themselves and the world, narcissism, shame and paranoia are eminently psychosocial in character. The borders we will be concerned with over the course of our discussions – the borders that trouble our patients and challenge our practice – are multiple: they may be indebted to classical nosology and the pathologies of the so-called ‘borderline’, but they move into other domains, including the social and political. Across these five seminars our task will be to consider narcissism, shame and paranoia as border concepts, asking how they can be worked with in their many clinical and cultural manifestations.
N.B. The following readings are subject to change (full reading lists, and individual seminar descriptors will be provided in good time for the sessions). Also, please don’t feel obliged to purchase any of the below; we will be able to find a workaround for texts that aren’t easily accessible.
Borderlines (April 17th)
Gammelgaard, J. (2010) Chapter 10 (‘A Discussion of the Borderline Concept’) in Betweenity: A Discussion of the Concept of Borderline. Routledge: 199-216.
Sheils, B & Walsh, J. (2017) ‘Introduction’ in Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community (eds. Sheils and Walsh). Palgrave Macmillan: 1-40.
Stone, L. (1986) ‘The Widening Scope of Indications for Psychoanalysis’ in Essential Papers on Borderline Disorders: One Hundred Years at the Border (ed. M. H. Stone). New York University Press: 203-228.
Narcissism (April 24th)
Watt, J. (2018) ‘Narcissism Through the Digital Looking Glass’ in Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community (eds. Sheils and Walsh). Palgrave Macmillan: pp 65-89.
Tyler, I. (2007) ‘From “The Me Decade” to “The Me Millennium”: The Cultural History of Narcissism’ in International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10: pp 343–363.
Walsh, J. (2015) Chapter 1 in Narcissism and Its Discontents. Palgrave Macmillan.
Shame (May 01st)
Either
Pajaczkowska, C. & Ward, I. (2008) ‘Introduction’ in Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture (eds. Claire Pajaczkowska & Ivan Ward). Routledge: pp 1-20.
Or
Kauffman, J. (2010) ‘On the Primacy of Shame’ (Introduction) in The Shame of Death Grief and Trauma (ed. Jeffrey Kauffman). Routledge: pp 3-22.
Plus
Fanon, F. (2008 [1957]) Black Skin White Masks. London, Pluto Press – extracts from.
Paranoia (May 08th)
Doyle, J. (2017) ‘Rethinking a Case of Paranoia as a Workplace Complaint’ in Studies in Gender and Sexuality. 18:1, pp 4-12.
Freud, S. (1915) ‘A Case of Paranoia running Counter to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Disease’, SE, XIV: pp 261-272.
Freud, S. (1896) ‘Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’ [Analysis of a Case of Chronic Paranoia]’, SE, III: pp 174-185.
Focus of seminar to be decided with group (May 15th)
Possible reading:
Frosh, S. (2016) ‘Relationality in a time of surveillance: Narcissism, melancholia, paranoia’ in Subjectivity Vol 9, Issue 1: pp 1-15.
Metcalf, A. (2008) ‘Through a Lens Darkly: Working with a CCTV Team in Trouble’ in Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis, 2(1): pp 80-85.
TRAINING WEEKEND. Anastasios Gaitanidis and Christina Moutsou May 22/23
The Relational Tradition: From Ferenczi to Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis”
We would like to facilitate a weekend workshop on relational psychoanalysis. Anastasios Gaitanidis will teach on the legacy of Ferenczi as the predecessor of relational psychoanalysis. He will focus on the themes in Ferenczi’s work that have been developed more fully in the context of the relational school. Christina Moutsou will follow up with an analysis of the cornerstones of contemporary relational psychoanalysis, especially in relation to the work of Jessica Benjamin. She will also refer to her collection of short stories on relational psychoanalysis recently published by Routledge. We will conclude the weekend by offering a joint seminar with a focus on experiential work to encourage the trainees to understand relational work in depth and to help them integrate the theoretical and clinical aspects of the work.
Reading list to follow.
James Mann and Peter Nevins, June 5 12 19 26, July 3
THE UNDERGROUND MAN AND THE HUNGER ARTIST EXPERIENCE FEAR AND TREMBLING AS THEY VENTURE BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL….IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY, YOU’RE SURE OF A BIG SURPRISE….
“Alas,” said the mouse, “the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide that I ran along and was happy to see walls appearing to my right and left, but these high walls converged so quickly that I’m already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run.”
“But you’ve only got to run the other way,” said the cat, and ate it.
This short piece was written by Franz Kafka probably in 1920. It is called A Little Fable.In this series of seminars we will be looking closely at the work of several writers who created the idea of The Outsider in existential philosophy.We will be looking at Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche specifically, with additional readings from both Freud, Deleuze and Guattari. We will explore how these thinkers might have informed the development of both psychoanalytic theory and clinical work. We will be reading these long deceased white men alongside Judith Butler’s 2003 text which is itself an extended meditation on moral philosophy.
Reading:
Judith Butler: ‘Giving an Account of Oneself’.
Dostoyevsky: ‘Notes from the Underground’.
Kafka: ‘Selected Short Stories’.
Kierkegaard: ‘Fear and Trembling’ and ‘The Sickness unto Death’.
Nietzsche: ‘Beyond good and Evil’.
Deleuze and Guattari: ‘Kafka, towards a minor Literature’.