Oslo Programme

REVOLUTIONS AND REVOLTS

CONFERENCE IN THE NORWEGIAN PSYCHOANALYTICAL SOCIETY,
OSLO, MAY 27th-28th 2023

Programme

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The title of this conference is inspired by the ongoing Iranian revolution, though it may also be taken to refer to a range of different revolutions and revolts, revolutionary moments in an individual’s or group’s life, or to psychoanalysis as revolutionary. We consider revolutions and revolts from different geographical perspectives and in different locations, engaging with different aspects of this theme, in the past as well as in our present.

SATURDAY 27th

09.00-09.30 Opening address with presentation round

Chair: Karl Eldar Evang

09.30-10.20 SVEIN HAUGSGJERD – Paternal authority, social antagonisms and the power of words

10.30-11.20 LENE AUESTAD – Between Animal and Machine: Identifications and Revolts, Revolting Identifications

11.30-12.20 THEODOROS PANTAZOPOULOS – The Homeostatic value of Revolutions in Society

12.30-13.20 ANDREA MALESEVIC  – The revolutionary breath: The role of respiration in resistance movements and in the clinical room

13.20-15.00 Lunch

Chair: Philip Hewitt

15.00-15.50 GILI LIVIATAN  – Restoring a World Destroyed: On Feminine Reparation in Appelfeld’s Astonishment

16.00-16.50 ERAN ROLNIK – Broken Mirror: De-identification as a driving force in the Revolt against the January 2023 planned Overhaul of the Israeli Judiciary

17.00-17.50 CAT MOIR – In search of lost selves: Mourning, melancholy, and the quest for identity after the “peaceful revolution”

18.00-18.50 SZYMON WRÓBEL – The Black Protests in Poland as an Example of an Anti-Pastoral Revolution

(Joint dinner, covered by the organizers, in the evening)

 

SUNDAY 28th

Chair: Gelayoul Salamelahi

09.00-09.50 GRETCHEN A. SCHMUTZ – The Inability to Revolt

10.00-10.50 NAZAN ÜSTÜNDAĞ – Revolutionary Subjects of the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement

11.00-11.50 PER JOHAN ISDAHL  – Understanding altruism as an effect of violent paradoxical social change. The work of Pitirim Sorokin as transference inspiration

12.00-12.50  JUDY SCHEEL – From rage to loss:  Identification and Idealization of Donald Trump. A case study of an American in the US south

12.50-14.30 Lunch

Chair: Lene Auestad

14.30-15.20 CHRISTOS PANAGIOTOU – The Liminal Paradigm of Revolution: A Study of Premodern Mediterranean Cultural Transformations through the Jami Kebir Cemetery reliefs in Limassol, Cyprus

15.30-16.20 JESSICA KARLÉN – The Fool’s Journey: Comedy, Taboo, and the Expression of the Subject in Psychoanalytic Theories

16.30-17.20 JAY FRANKEL – The dynamics of hypocrisy, and the struggle to live within the truth

17.30-18.20 Closing discussion, feedback about the conference

 

The time frame for each paper is 30 min for the presentation itself + 20 min for discussion, 50 min in total, and with a 10 min break in between each paper. This is an interdisciplinary conference. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants; the symposium series creates a space where representatives of different perspectives come together, engage with one another’s contributions and participate in a community of thought. Therefore, attendance of the whole symposium is obligatory. We would like to thank the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society. Psychoanalysis and Politics is registered as a non-profit organization in Norway, org.no. 998 503 221. Conferences have been held in 11 European countries since 2010.

 

About the speakers

LENE AUESTAD is Dr. of Philosophy from the Ethics Programme, University of Oslo. She writes and lectures internationally on ethics, critical theory and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on prejudice, racism, discrimination, trauma and nationalism. Books include Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination, Karnac/ Routledge 2015. She is the founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate Member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society.

JAY FRANKEL, Ph.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City. He is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Consultant, in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, at New York University; Faculty in the Trauma Studies Program, at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, in New York. He has written on trauma, identification with the aggressor, authoritarianism, the analytic relationship, the work of Sándor Ferenczi, play, child psychotherapy, and relational psychoanalysis.

SVEIN HAUGSGJERD is a Psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society, previous experience with psychotic patients and drug addicts. Special interest in the traditions from Wilfred Bion and from Jaques Lacan. Ten years of experience teaching psychoanalysis in Russia, Stavropol region. Close contact with friends working in Palestine for 30 years. Latest book: a critique of New Public Management of mental health services in Norway. Under publication: contemporary and psychoanalytic approaches to psychosis, illustrated with examples from writers and painters.

PER JOHAN ISDAHL  is a Social and clinical psychologist, Oslo, Norway.

JESSICA KARLÉN is a comedian and performer with a background in Philosophy, Creative Writing, and Performing Arts who explores the power of comedy and taboo. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories, Jessica discusses how comedy provides a unique space for expressing desires and fears, using Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the figure of the fool. She delves into how comedy can express taboo subjects, creating discomfort to confront repressed desires and anxieties. Jessica also discusses how comedy, taboo, and power intersect, using feminist and postcolonial theory to explore how marginalized groups can use humor and satire to challenge dominant structures.

GILI LIVIATAN is a psychologist, The Open University of Israel, Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies, Bar Ilan university, Israel.

ANDREA MALEŠEVIĆ is a psychologist and psychodynamic psychotherapist living in Malmö, Sweden. She works primarily with traumatized patients in adult psychiatry.

CAT MOIR is an Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Germanic Studies, University of Sydney, retraining to become a psychoanalytically oriented clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in France.

CHRISTOS PANAGIOTOU is an academic, Department of Fine Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus.

THEODOROS PANTAZOPOULOS – is a Group Psychoanalytic Therapist based in Athens, Greece. His professional and academic fields of interest are Group Dynamics and Social Cohesion, the relationship between Psychoanalysis and the Arts, Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics and Creativity. He is a founding member and lecturer of the Greek Educational Institute for Analytical Group and Family Psychotherapy (www.elekin.gr).

ERAN ROLNIK is a psychiatrist, historian and training analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, a former member of its scientific Committee and currently a member of the History Committee of the IPA. He is also on the steering committee of the Freud Studies Program at the Tel-Aviv University school of psychotherapy. His research topics over the years included: the making of analytic identity, reading Freud, history of psychoanalysis, teaching psychoanalysis, antisemitism, psychoanalysis and history, psychoanalytic weltanschauung, the psychoanalytic object. He has given talks and seminars at analytic societies in Poland, Berlin, Frankfurt, Philadelphia, Chicago, NYC, Vienna,  London, Athens.

JUDY SCHEEL, Ph.D., LCSW is currently finishing  a Two-year Certificate Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in New York.  She has advanced degrees and post-graduate certifications in both psychology and clinical social work which include NYU Medical Langone Human Sexuality and Sex Therapy Program and John Jay College of Criminal Justice NYC in Forensic Psychology.  She is regarded as an expert in the treatment of eating and related disorders and author of When food is family:  A loving approach to heal eating disorders. (2011. Idyll Arbor. WA.) In addition, she maintains two blogs for the general public in Psychology Today Magazine on-line:  “Sex is a Language” and “When Food is Family.”  She has been an adjunct professor at the undergraduate level. She founded and was the Director at Cedar Associates, an out-patient treatment center for eating disorders in New York.  She currently maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Charlotte, North Carolina and New York City.

GRETCHEN A. SCHMUTZ, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst treating children, adolescents, and adults in Chicago, USA. She is Faculty at the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago, and at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. She is also a member of the Contemporary Freudian Society. She is both the North American Editor for Books Reviews and an associate board member for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

NAZAN ÜSTÜNDAĞ is an Independent Scholar in Sociology, Berlin, Germany.

SZYMON WRÓBEL is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” of the University of Warsaw. He is a psychologist and philosopher interested in contemporary social and political theory and philosophy of language. He has published seven books in Polish and numerous articles in academic journals. His two latest books Deferring the Self and Grammar and Glamour of Cooperation. Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Language and Action have been published in 2014 by Peter Lang.

 

 

Image: N. Kravchenko. Painting, “The revolution is coming”, 5. November 1917. Source: Wikimedia Commons.