March 17, 2017 - Billrothhaus, Vienna: Eli Zaretsky, Professor for History at the New School, about Freud's importance for the political left in the 20th century. This talk was the opening lecture for the Sigmund Freud Museum's conference "Where Is the Unconscious Today?" on March 17 and 18, 2017.
In this masterful psychological-intellectual history, Eli Zaretsky shows Freudianism to be something more than a method of psychotherapy. When considered alongside the major struggles of the twentieth century, Freudianism becomes a catalyst of the age. Political Freud is Zaretsky's account of the way twentieth century radicals, activists, and thinkers used Freudian thought to understand the political developments of their century. Through his reading, he shows the ongoing, formative power of Freudianism in contemporary times.
The role played by political Freudianism was chaotic and oftentimes contradictory. Nevertheless, Zaretsky's conception of political Freudianism unites the two great themes of the century--totalitarianism and consumerism--in one framework. He shows how important political readings of Freud were to the theory of fascism and the experience of the Holocaust, the critical role they played in African American radical thought, particularly in the struggle for racial memory, and in the rebellions of the 1960s and their culmination in feminism and gay liberation. Yet Freudianism's involvement in history was not one-sided. Its interaction with historical forces shaped the Freudian tradition as well, and in this illuminating account, Zaretsky tracks the evolution of Freudian ideas across the decades so we can better recognize its manifestations today.
The work of Freud has shaped ideas, discussion and social discourse since the start of the twentieth century. This event revisited his key ideas and the influence they have had on society over the past hundred years.
This event was the first in a series re-examining the life and works of influential historical figures from across the humanities and social sciences, exploring the important and continuing influences they have on society and debating their place as key thinkers for our time.
Speakers:
Professor Stephen Frosh, Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Ankhi Mukherjee, University of Oxford
Dr Shohini Chaudhuri, University of Essex
Dr Jana Funke, University of Exeter
Wednesday 25 November 2015, 6-7.30pm
The British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH
The current refugee crisis is a marker of worldly and political change which puts dignity into question. This paper examines the nature of the contemporary forms of dehumanisation of refugees and reflects on the ethical challenge it poses to us as modern subjects. In Arendt, Heidegger's thoughts on the spatiality of being––on how we dwell in places that afford possibilities for being, where we can be projected so as to have potentiality, make space and show care for things, people and projects––are reconstructed as communicative and political. The loss of a place in the world, of membership in a political community, entails the loss of the relevance of one's speech, the capacity to disclose one's 'who' and thus one's dignity. Thinking psychoanalytically, I shall argue that the dehumanisation involved in the current depiction of refugees has two distinct modes: 1) demonization in terms of invasion of one's 'I', body, or territory; and 2) non- or misrepresentation as expressions of shared primary process thinking (i.e. of today's social unconscious). This making invisible or blurring of the non-belonging other raises questions of representation in relation to spatiality. I shall end by outlining some conditions for hospitality, for sharing the world with others.
Lene Auestad holds a PhD in Philosophy from The University of Oslo. She is editor of Psychoanalysis and Politics: Exclusion and the Politics of Representation (Karnac, 2012), Nationalism and the Body Politic: Psychoanalysis and the growth of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia (Karnac 2013) and a book on Hannah Arendt in Norwegian (Akademika, 2011). Her monograph Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination was published by Karnac Books in 2015. She founded and runs the international and interdisciplinary conference series Psychoanalysis and Politics.
Lambeth and Southwark Mind's 2016 annual lecture. Darian Leader, a leading thinker and psychoanalyst, talks about the importance of thinking about psychosis and our responses to it. We can see the psychotic individual as attempting forms of self-cure, and the role of the analyst maybe to act as "secretary", to help this process. This modest role is in fact crucial in holding the patient together. This is one of many ideas formulated in this wide ranging lecture.
A Documentary about psychoanalytic psychotherapy in India (2016)
Staring: Anup Dhar, Ambedkar University Delhi Santanu Biswas, Jadavpur University Calcutta Sudhir Kakar, Goa and Aleeka Kumar, Mumbai A Master Thesis (in the field of Psychology) shot by Tobias Reisch, International Psychoanalytical University Berlin
Buenos Aires is the psychoanalytic capital of the world boasting twice the number of therapists per head than New York.
Through years of state terror and economic disaster millions of
Argentines have sought refuge on the analyst's couch. Such a demand for
an expensive and time consuming exercise suggests a neurosis on a
national scale. Like the analyst, this film puts Argentina on the couch
to find the roots causes of this unique obsession.
Charles Mingus’ Sigmund Freud-Inspired Song Dedicated to Mothers Everywhere (1961)
And now, ladies and gentleman, you have been such a wonderful audience. We have a special treat in store for you. This is a composition dedicated to all mothers. And it’s titled “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother.” Which means if Sigmund Freud’s wife was your mother, all the things you could be by now. Which means nothing, you got it? Thank you.
Adam Phillips, one of Britain’s most renowned psychoanalysts and literary figures, joined RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor for a conversation about life, the universe, and everything (and maybe a little Freud as well).
"In the entire span of his teaching, Lacan was engaged in an intense debate with philosophy and philosophers, from ancient Greek materialists to Plato, from Stoics to Thomas Acquinas, from Descartes to Spinoza, from Kant to Hegel, from Marx to Kierkegaard, from Heidegger to Kripke. It is through the reference to philosophers that Lacan deploys his fundamental concepts: transference through Plato, the Freudian subject through Descartes’s cogito, surplus-enjoyment through Marx’s surplus-value, anxiety and repetition through Kierkegaard, the ethics of psychoanalysis through Kant, etc. Through this continuous engagement, Lacan is of course distancing himself from philosophy; however, all his desperate attempts to draw the line of separation again and again re-assert his commitment to philosophy – as if the only way for him to delineate the basic concepts of psychoanalysis is through a philosophical detour. Although psychoanalysis is not philosophy, its subversive dimension is grounded in the fact that it is not simply a particular science or practice but has radical consequences for philosophy: psychoanalysis is a “no” to philosophy that is internal to it, i.e., psychoanalytic theory refers to a gap/antagonism which philosophy blurs but which simultaneously grounds philosophy (Heidegger called this gap ontological difference). Without this link to philosophy – more precisely, to the blind spot of philosophy, to what is “primordially repressed” in philosophy – psychoanalysis loses its subversive dimension and becomes just another ontic practice."
Masterclass 2: Is it Possible to Move Beyond the Transcendental?
“In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. [...] It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement. Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. [...] The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology.”
The following is the full version of a lecture delivered by Slavoj Zizek on Architecture and Aesthetics in which he talks about a range of issues including, but not limited to, the meanings and implications of public spaces (what he says is the ‘privatized public spaces’), the invisible space (i.e., canalization referring to sewage system), the sanitatization of the city, ideology embedded in our everyday architecture (i.e., toilet), the notions of ‘more’ imbedded in ‘less’, etc.
In this tour de force filmed lecture, Slavoj Žižek lucidly and compellingly reflects on belief – which takes him from Father Christmas to democracy – and on the various forms that belief takes, drawing on Lacanian categories of thought. In a radical dismissal of today’s so called post-political era, he mobilizes the paradox of universal truth urging us to dare to enact the impossible. It is a characteristic virtuoso performance, moving promiscuously from subject to subject but keeping the larger argument in view.
The awards were inspired by Freud's essay "Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (1907(1905)), in which he stated, "Creative writers are valuable allies and their evidence is to be prized highly, for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us dream ... they draw upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science."
Reproduction of the Gradiva which hung next to Freud's Couch. Photo by Edmund Engelman, 1938
Recalling Freud's words, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) established the Gradiva® Awards to honor our "valuable allies," including poets, artists, producers, directors, publishers, etc., who have created works that advance psychoanalysis.
2016 Gradiva Nominees
Film
“Vamik’s Room” by Molly Castelloe
A documentary film by Molly Castelloe, about psychoanalyst and 5-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vamik Volkan
“The Id, the Ego, and the Superego” by Freud Museum London
The annual Gradiva® Awards for the best published, produced, or publicly exhibited works that advance psychoanalysis are presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis at a special awards ceremony during our annual conference each fall in NYC.
Each winner receives a handsome brass plaque etched with the image of Gradiva, which is based on a Pompeiian relief similar to one that hung in Freud’s office. An additional award that includes a $500 scholarship is given to the best student paper that has not been previously published.
“Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French 20th-century philosopher and historian who spent his career forensically critiquing the power of the modern bourgeois capitalist state, including its police, law courts, prisons, doctors and psychiatrists. His goal was to work out nothing less than how power worked and then to change it in the direction of a Marxist-anarchist utopia. Though he spent most of his life in libraries and seminar rooms, he was a committedly revolutionary figure, who met with enormous popularity in elite Parisian intellectual circles (Jean Paul Sartre admired him deeply) and still maintains a wide following among young people studying at university in the prosperous corners of the world…”
“Cinema plus Psychoanalysis equals the Science of Ghosts.” ― Jacques Derrida
British filmmaker Ken McMullen's improvisational, non-linear film, 'Ghost Dance' (1983) concerns itself with various 'ghosts' (e.g., Kafka, Marx, Freud) and the issue of memory (the past) and how it functions in the present ... French philosopher Jacques Derrida plays 'himself' in the film and comments upon ghosts as they pertain to cinema and representation itself ... cinema, for Derrida, 'is the art of ghosts' and he regards himself - as portrayed in the film - as yet another ghost in whom he 'believes' ... modern technology (specifically, telecommunications), he says, instead of vanquishing ghosts, actually multiplies them ... however this is not necessarily negative - its quite the opposite - 'long live the ghosts!' he exclaims near the end of the clip ... the late Pascale Ogier plays 'Pascale' who is questioning Derrida ...
Here, Derrida discusses the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, linking ideas such as Echo's repeating of Narcissus' last words (in whatever he spoke), to the non-transparency, the 'blindness' that he feels characterizes all speech ... however, Derrida maintains that Echo is able to 'appropriate' Narcissus' language in such a way that it becomes hers, in a sense, subverting Hera's punishment... he finally asks how two such 'blind' persons can love one another...
XLIII. Sigmund Freud Lecture, delivered by Stefano Bolognini, President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. May 21, 2016 at the Billrothhaus, Vienna.
Every year, the Sigmund Freud Foundation is organising a lecture to honor Sigmund Freud's birthday. Renowned speakers, such as Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Siri Hustvedt, Jessica Benjamin et al gave this lecture in the past 40 years.
Q & A
In common language the word “empathy” evokes some superficial mix of sweet tenderness, benevolence a priori, friendly support and no interpretive penetration for disclosing the unconscious level of the psychic reality. In psychoanalysis “empathy” means something profoundly different. This paper emphasizes the difference between normal human empathy and psychoanalytic empathy, which is a much more complex phenomenon.
“True empathy is a condition of conscious and preconscious contact characterized by separateness, complexity and a linked structure, a wide perceptual spectrum including every colour in the emotional palette, from the lightest to the darkest; above all, it constitutes a progressive shared and deep contact with the complementarity of the object, with the other's defensive ego and split off parts no less than with his ego-syntonic subjectivity”(Bolognini, 1997).
Through three short clinical examples, the author will provide the audience with a lively and shareable experience of the depth, complexity and partial unpredictability of psychoanalytic empathy: something that cannot be planned, but that has to be recognized and appreciated as one of the most important and effective events that can change an analytic process and, consequently, the destiny of a patient’s life.
Stefano Bolognini; Doctor in Medicine and psychiatrist, training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. He is the President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, after having been IPA Board Representative and chair of several IPA committees. Stefano Bolognini is a former President of the Bologna Psychoanalytic Center, former President of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. For 10 years (2002-2012) he was member of the European Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is the author of several books, participates regularly in radio and television debates and writes for main Italian newspapers and magazines.
