Call for papers for the Psychoanalysis and Politics conference in the EPF House (European Psychoanalytic Federation), Brussels,
Rue Gérard 35, 1040 Etterbeek, Belgique, May 11^th-12^th 2024. 

Register for the conference

We have recently lived through a pandemic, and we have yet to work through the experiences it gave rise to and to understand how it has changed us and our surrounding world. The covid years caused and revealed death, losses, isolation, and inequality. Death was at our doorstep. Forced isolation from loved ones led to loneliness for many of us, while others were forcibly packed too tightly together, leading in both cases to loss of a suitable space for human interaction and support (see Arendt, 1958). These states gave rise to the sense of being abandoned, being left to fend for oneself. Some were abandoned to a greater degree than others; “All of Society does not fall apart at once”, wrote Jonathan Sklar (2020). “We are mainly used to being on the comfortable side of the equation rather than the other side. It can be very wretched being on the other side, living near the edge of a falling life, or worst, being over the precipice with no employment, very little money, cramped home conditions or living on the street. Those in some comfort can look over to the other side and locate the problem over there.” “In the aftermath,” he predicted, “there may be an eruption of overt psychic pain that will need to be understood and held.” On a more hopeful note, Jill Gentile (2020) wrote; “We might then say that the coronavirus has functioned, on a remarkable scale, as does psychoanalysis: breaking apart ideological enclosures and curbing our inclination toward repetition. […] Who among us, who has the privilege for any modicum of self-reflection, is not taking inventory of their lives –asking what needs to be shed, and what might, just might, be possible to change? Or at very least discovering that some things –freshly experienced as utterly unacceptable – absolutely can’t remain the same?”

Though, a few years later, it appears that several things have not only remained the same; conditions have worsened, and there is great insecurity about the state of the world we live in. The covid crisis was accompanied by an economic crisis, which was further increased by Russia’s war on Ukraine and free market policies. We have witnessed an increase in inequality and in poverty, and surprisingly, the pandemic has not entailed further investments in national health services. Rather, de-funding of the health sector appears to be the norm. Social investments in care and solidarity are thus far absent. Unsurprisingly, a systematic review of global research linking financial crises and mental harms has shown that these crises have consistent, long-term negative effects on people’s wellbeing, including increases in depression, anxiety, and risk of suicide. The review highlighted that the way societies are structured affects the impact of financial crises on their populations’ mental health; “At a national level, having strong welfare, accessible health services and progressive attitudes towards mental health are shown to reduce suicide and mental illness” (Talamonti et.al. 2023). Thus parallels may be drawn between the large-scale economy and the psychic economy of individuals, as well as, as does Katherine Kelley-Lainé, between democratic and totalitarian states and states of mind; “The maturational process is a complex and difficult dynamic for all human beings. We could call it the ‘économie vitale’, or simply the life process of differentiation [….] The creation of distrust, perpetual paranoia, and fear are essential to maintain an atmosphere of terror to conserve the State’s iron grip of total power” (2017). We may recall Bion’s statement that “healthy mental growth seems to depend on truth as the living organism depends on food. If it is lacking or deficient the personality deteriorates” (1965). As we witness two ongoing wars, how might we conceive of the interaction between the social and personal level in our relation towards truth, authenticity, lying, deceit, and propaganda?

“In the confusion of wartime in which we are caught up, relying as we must on one-sided information,” wrote Freud in 1915, “we ourselves are at a loss as to the significance of the impressions which press in upon us and as to the value of the judgements which we form.” After having been present to listen to one of Hitler’s speeches, Roger Money-Kyrle reflected on its structure: “it was not enough to substitute an external enemy for an internal one. It was also necessary to convert the internal persecutor into a mighty ally, which remained terrible indeed, but which would become terrible only to one’s enemies, and no longer to himself. The devil became the German (phallic) war god, and each listener felt him arise and throb within his breast” (1941-42). In describing the psychological process of propaganda, he stated; “First fear is stirred up, then hate to keep it in check; but the hate expects retaliation and thus increases fear, which has to be drowned by more hate and so on. The system needs effective hate – hate which can be satisfied – in order to preserve its life. If the hate were to become impotent, it would collapse into the hysterical anxiety which is its unconscious foundation.” Having aroused or intensified anxiety, the propaganda must next awaken hope in its particular form of salvation; it’s hero “begins as a saviour from real troubles, which he has probably exaggerated. He ends as the saviour from the anxiety which isolation outside his group may alone be sufficient to produce.”

In times of war, wrote Freud (1915) “Death can no longer be denied; we are forced to believe in it”, though as opposed to philosophers’ idea primaeval man being forced to reflection by the picture of death, becoming the starting point of all speculation, he argued that “What released the spirit of enquiry in man was not the intellectual enigma, and not every death, but the conflict of feeling at the death of loved yet alien and hated persons. […] It was beside the dead body of someone he loved that he invented spirits, and his sense of guilt at the satisfaction mingled with his sorrow turned these new-born spirits into evil demons that had to be dreaded.”

We invite contributions on these and related issues, on questions of decadence, decay, and destruction, and of psychic and other economies in our time.

***

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary, or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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, attending the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com by March 13^th 2024. We will respond by, and present a full programme on March 18^th 2024.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes one shared three course dinner with wine, of € 379 before March 20th 2024 – € 449 between March 20th 2024 and April 17th 2024 – € 549 after April 17th, is to be paid before the symposium. Your place is only confirmed once your registration including payment is completed. Please note that places are limited, and that we may close the registration early if the spaces are filled up early. The final date for registration is May 1st. Your conference is fee is refundable up until the end of March 2024. After this date, it is non-refundable.

Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including your payment. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the European Psychoanalytic Federation.

Depending on your tax regime, it is likely that you can put the participant’s fee towards your private practice. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will aim to make a reservation at a nearby hotel with a group discount. You will contact this (or another) hotel individually to book your room. Please contact us if you wish to donate towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

Upon your request, we will issue a letter stating that you have participated in this conference, which may qualify for CPD points, though you would want to check with your training institution whether this satisfies their requirements.

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly.

Works cited

Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Bion, W.R. (1965) Transformations. London: William Heineman.

Freud, S. (1915) “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”, SE, vol. 14.

Gentile, J. (2020) “Time may Change Us: The Strange Temporalities, Novel Paradoxes, and Democratic Imaginaries of a Pandemic”, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 68., no. 4, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003065120955120

Kelley-Lainé, K. (2017) “From Totalitarian to Democratic Functioning: The Psychic Economy of Infantile Processes” in L. Auestad, A. Treacher Kabesh, eds. Traces of Violence and Freedom of Thought. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Money-Kyrle, R. (1941-42) “The Psychology of Propaganda” in The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle, D. Meltzer/ E. O’Shaughnessy eds., Clunie Press, 1978.

Sklar, J. (2020) “A-tishoo, A-tishoo We All Fall Down”, London, 24 March, Reflections in Our Times, https://www.psa-pol.org/reflections-in-our-times/a-tishoo-a-tishoo-we-all-fall-down/ – a longer version is forthcoming in Sklar, J (2024) The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play, London: Karnac.

Talamonti, S., Schneider, J., Gibson, B., Forshaw, M. (2023)  “The impact of national and international financial crises on mental health and well-being: a systematic review” in Journal of Mental Health, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638237.2023.2278104 and see: “Financial crises damage people’s mental health – our global review shows who is worst affected” in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/financial-crises-damage-peoples-mental-health-our-global-review-shows-who-is-worst-affected-218313

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR OUR SPRING SYMPOSIUM IN THE NORWEGIAN PSYCHOANALYTICAL SOCIETY

OSLO, MAY 27^th-28^th 2023

Fr. Nansens vei 17, 0369 Oslo

Register to participate in this conference

Speakers include:
JAY FRANKEL – The dynamics of hypocrisy, and the struggle to live within the truth (Psychologist and psychoanalyst, Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York University)
SZYMON WRÓBEL – The Black Protests in Poland as an Example of an Anti-Pastoral Revolution (Professor of Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences and Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)

The outside world is currently watching with excitement as well as horror the protests taking place in Iran against a regime which brutally assaults and murders the citizens who stand up against it. The slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” centres on the elements the regime suppresses; its female citizens primarily, and the fundamental rights to live and to think and act freely. In this context, Gohar Homayounpour (2023) refers to “the birth of a new female epic hero”, and along with previous revolts in Iran, it echoes the title of Juliet Mitchell’s (1971) article, “Women: The Longest Revolution”, which points to the neglect of the problem of women’s condition within socialist thinking, and emphasises the importance of combining attention to experiences of oppression with analyses of the uneven development of oppressive structures.

As a parallel to what Freud (1919) observed – “heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich” – the words “revolution” and “revolt” have a shared origin, both ultimately going back to the Latin revolvere, “to revolve, roll back.” When the term “revolution” first appeared in English in the 14th century, it referred to the movement of a celestial body in orbit; that sense was extended to “a progressive motion of a body around an axis,” “completion of a course,” and other senses suggesting regularity of motion or a predictable return to an original position. At virtually the same time, the word developed a sharply different meaning, namely, “a sudden radical, or complete change,” apparently from the idea of reversal of direction implicit in the Latin verb. “Revolt,” which initially meant “to renounce allegiance,” grew from the same idea of “rolling back,” in this case from a prior bond of loyalty. We might link this process to the compulsion to repeat, and to the need to repeat, to conjure up “a piece of real life”, as “one cannot overcome an enemy who is absent”, and to the significance of working through, “a course which cannot be avoided nor always hastened.” “Reification”, wrote Russell Jacoby, is a social illusion which “works to preserve the status quo by presenting the human and social relationships of society as natural – and unchangeable – relations between things. What is often ignored in expositions of the concept of reification is the psychological dimension: amnesia – a forgetting and repression of the human and social activity that makes and can remake society. The social loss of memory is a type of reification – better: it is the primal form of reification.”

The psychoanalytic decentring of the ‘I’ and its emphasis on understanding unconscious forces of oppression as well as the liberatory potential of reconciliation with the ‘it’ stands against the dominant view of human beings and social relations. Furthermore, its refusal of a sharp distinction between ‘the individual’ and ‘the social’ lays the basis for reimagining social relations. Psychoanalytic theory tells us that the ‘I’ is not ‘the master in its own house’, that the idea of total autonomy is a fiction. Psychoanalytic practice, on the other hand, aims at increasing one’s degree of freedom – freedom is conceived of as gradual rather than absolute – via ‘working through’ of material that blocks one’s capacity for vision, thus enabling alternative paths of action. Both Barnaby Barratt (2016) and Jill Gentile (2016) have linked the psychoanalytic practice of free association to radical liberation – a freedom of thought and imagination which open up new possibilities for being and living.

In reflecting on Freud’s practice of listening, Abramson (1984) emphasised the link between what one might describe as psychoanalysis’ respect for subjectivity and its stand against manipulation: “Freud’s practice of therapy […] implicitly ruled out the efficacy of manipulating the patient from the outside – as if human minds were objects like any other objects, movable by electric shocks, chemical drugs, orgone boxes, or mineral baths. There remained an irreducible sense in which the human being must be approached as his own subject – as a participant in the constitution of his experiences”. Compared to such methods as lobotomy, ECT and arguably, CBT, Auestad (2005) argued, psychoanalysis can be said to have an opposite aim; “where the former are based on the principle of the removal of painful emotional states and/or memories of painful experiences whether physically or by means of ‘techniques of thought’, without noticing what these are about, psychoanalytic method would aim to detoxify the emotion/memory/experience, to make it bearable so that it can be reintegrated, lived with as part of oneself. Rather than (metaphorically) amputating what causes pain and distress, a psychoanalytic take would be to show that it can be spoken about and borne and validated by a listening other – and mourned – so that it would lose its explosive power after having acknowledged, accepted and shared.” As Freud (1914) reminds us, to remember something in this context means to remember it as mine, not someone else’s or something distant or remote, but a live force, “a piece of his personality, which has solid grounds for its existence and out of which things of value for his future life have to be derived”. We may ask how such insight, such reconciliation, links with liberatory practice aimed at social change on a smaller or larger scale, and what authentic liberation might mean to us today. What might we learn from previous attempts at revolts and revolution? What does it take to initiate radical change, and what are the pitfalls of this impulse?

The political meaning of ‘revolution’, to “overthrow of an established political or social system” is recorded by c. 1600, derived from French into English. Since then, we have witnessed a number of revolutions, failed as well as successful. In more recent times, we might think of the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement and environmentalist actions among others. While the title of this conference is inspired by the ongoing Iranian revolution, 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 encourage contributions that consider revolutions and revolts from different geographical perspectives and in different locations, and that engage with different aspects of this theme, in the past as well as in our present.

***

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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, attending the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com by March 20^th 2023. We will respond by, and present a full programme on March 30^th 2023.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes one shared three course dinner with wine, of € 379 before April 5^th 2023 – € 449 between April 6^th 2023 and May 2^nd 2023 – € 549 after May 2^nd, is to be paid before the symposium.

Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including your payment. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society.

Depending on your tax regime, it is likely that you can put the participant’s fee towards your private practice. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will aim to make a reservation at a nearby hotel with a group discount. You will contact this (or another) hotel individually to book your room. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly.

Works cited

Abramson, J. B. (1984) Liberation and its Limits. The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. London: The Free Press/Collier MacMillan Publishers.

Auestad, L. (2005) Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination. London: Karnac/Routledge.

Barratt, B.  (2016) Radical Psychoanalysis: An Essay on Free-Associative Praxis. London: Routledge.

Freud, S. (1914) Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. SE, vol 24.

Freud, S. (1919) The Uncanny. SE, vol 17.

Gentile, J. (2016) Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire. London: Karnac/Routledge.

Homayounpour, G. (2023) “The birth of a new female epic hero in “the subversive feminist revolt” of our times in Iran. Towards an ethics of life” A Political Mind Special, Jan. 20^th  https://psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm/event/info%3Fid%3D1344%26reset%3D1

Jacoby, R. (1975) Social Amnesia. A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing. Sussex: The Harvester Press.

Mitchell, J. (1971) “Women: The Longest Revolution” https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/mitchell-juliet/longest-revolution.htm

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

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR OUR AUTUMN SYMPOSIUM IN THE BERLIN PSYCHOANALYTICAL INSTITUTE, KARL-ABRAHAM-INSTITUT (BPI),
BERLIN, OCT. 1^st-3^rd 2021

Körnerstraße 11, 10785 Berlin-Mitte

PRESENTATIONS INCLUDE:
ANGELIKA EBRECHT-LAERMANN -The destructiveness of art and beauty. Superego perversions in dreams about fascist imaginaries (Prof. Dr. phil., Training analyst, Berlin Psychoanalytical Institute, DPV)
SUZANNE KAPLAN – Letters from Bloomy (film screening and dialogue) (Training and child analyst, Swedish Psychoanalytical Association, Dr of Education Stockholm Un., Researcher, Hugo Valentin Centre/ Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Uppsala.)
JONATHAN SKLAR – Apocalyptic life and the missing debate (Training analyst, British Psychoanalytic Society)
CLAUDIA THUßBAS – Mothers made of steel – steeled babies: National socialist fantasies about motherhood (Dr. phil., Training analyst, Berlin Psychoanalytical Institute, DPV)
SZYMON WRÓBEL – Fascism as a symptom, function and ideological scheme (Professor, In.of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

Register for this conference

CALL FOR PAPERS:

“The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again”, wrote Theodor W. Adorno. He credited Freud with the profound insight that “civilization itself produces anti-civilization and increasingly reinforces it”, and added that “his writings Civilization and its Discontents and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego deserve the widest possible diffusion, especially in connection with Auschwitz.” It is 100 years since the latter work was published, in 1921. The First World War had ended in the autumn of 1918, and the Treaty of Versailles followed in 1919. In Germany, Hitler was beginning to make use of his Storm Troopers, the SA, and in Italy, Mussolini set up the Fighting League that gave their name to fascism, the Fasci di Combattimento, and launched the fascist party in 1921.

The year before, in 1920, Freud had published Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he introduced the death and destruction drive and discussed the compulsion to repeat. In Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud had spoken of emotional ambivalence and on the primal horde, which he continued to make use of in his further thinking of groups. “If the individuals in the group are combined into a unity, there must surely be something to unite them,” he wrote in Group Psychology, where he introduced the concepts of identification and the ego ideal. “It is not an overstatement, wrote Adorno, if we say that Freud, though he was hardly interested in the political phase of the problem, clearly foresaw the rise and nature of fascist mass movements in purely psychological categories. If it is true that the analyst’s unconscious perceives the unconscious of the patient, one may also presume that his theoretical intuitions are capable of anticipating tendencies still latent on a rational level but manifesting themselves on a deeper one.” He suggested that the aim of fascism and fascist propaganda is the opposite of psychoanalysis or the psychoanalytic process, “through the perpetuation of dependence instead of the realization of potential freedom, through expropriation of the unconscious by social control instead of making the subjects conscious of their unconscious.”

The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio, meaning ‘bundle of sticks’, from the Latin word fasces. The name was given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, similar to guilds or syndicates. The Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces, a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate which could be used for corporal and capital punishment. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.

While there is no one agreed-upon definition of fascism, the historian Stanley G. Payne focuses on three concepts: 1. The “fascist negations”: anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism; 2. “Fascist goals”: the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire; and 3. “Fascist style”: a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership. Robert Paxton defines fascism as: “a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” Fascism tends to be racist, and most scholars place fascism on the far right of the political spectrum, focusing on its social conservatism and its authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.

To Jason Stanley, the most telling symptom of fascist politics is division, its aim of separating a population into an “us” and a “them”: “As the fear of “them” grows, “we” come to represent everything virtuous. “We” live in the rural heartland, where the pure values and traditions of the nation still miraculously exist despite the threat of cosmopolitanism from the nation’s cities, alongside the hordes of minorities who live there, emboldened by liberal tolerance.” With reference to the extreme right Jobbik party’s election posters, Ferenc Erós described how one of them read: “Budapest is the capital of the Hungarians”. “At first it seems to be a completely harmless declaration […] However, there is a simple rhetoric trick in it: instead of saying that “Budapest is the capital of Hungary, which is an obvious geographical and administrative fact, the statement on the poster presupposes that if Budapest is the capital of the Hungarians, it cannot be the capital of other peoples. The sentence implies the exclusion of others, the non-ethnic Hungarian citizens, such as Romani and Jews, who are, by the force of this definition, “foreign occupants”. This aim of drawing a distinction between a “real people” and its opposite, exemplifies the fascist belief in hierarches of power and dominance, grounded in nature, that are inconsistent with equality of respect between people.

Within the fascist mindset, the leader is analogous to the patriarchal father, the head of the traditional family. If the fascist demagogue is the father of the nation, any threat to patriarchal manhood and the traditional family undermines the fascist vision of strength. These perceived threats include the crimes of rape and assault, as well as sexual variety, viewed as deviance. Fascist propaganda promotes fear of interbreeding and race mixing, and the “enemy” is often portrayed in highly sexualised ways. “In the history of the United States, the fraudulent rape charge stands out as one of the most formidable artifices invented by racism”, wrote Angela Davis. “The myth of the Black rapist has been methodically conjured up whenever recurrent waves of violence and terror against the Black community have required convincing justification.” In Klaus Theweleit’s account of the fantasies of the men of the Friekorps, a forerunner to the SA, it becomes clear how their hatred and dread of women, rather than linked with Oedipal triangulation, arises in the pre-Oedipal struggle of the fledgling self; a dread of dissolution, of being swallowed, engulfed, annihilated. In these men’s imaginations, women are either indistinct, nameless, disembodied or vividly, aggressively sexual and threatening. Within universities, fascist thinking denounce disciplines that teach perspectives other than the dominant ones, and its opposition to gender studies in particular flows from its patriarchal ideology. As a field that promotes gender equality and problematises relations between genders and sexualities, gender studies has come under official attack in Russia, Poland and Hungary, and has been under fire from far-right nationalist movements across the world.

Contemporary conflicts around calls to decolonize the curriculum may also be seen in this light. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign aims to address racial abuse and injustice, as well as addressing curricula that represented culture and civilization as the product solely of white men. Hannah Arendt describes how imperialism combined racism and bureaucracy in “administrative massacres” which foreshadowed genocide on European soil. The violence Europeans perpetrated towards people on other continents was later brought back to Europe: “Imperialist rule, except for the purpose of name-calling, seems half-forgotten, and the chief reason why this is deplorable is that its relevance for contemporary events has become rather obvious in recent years.” Simukai Chigudu, associate professor of African history and politics at Oxford, writes of the colonial legacy and the shadow of Cecil Rhodes: “Saints’s rituals of dominance and sadism were only some of the ways that it taught its boys to accept the logic of colonialism. Wasn’t it only natural that older students ought to wield power over younger ones, or that those who excelled at sports or schoolwork be granted privileges, like the ability to tread on certain college lawns, that were denied to lesser children? Wasn’t it right that those who stepped out of line be forced to labour, or even whipped? These were perfect lessons for a world in which one race thought itself worthy of violently subjugating another.” He continues: “Unlike many of our critics, we at least recognised that the statue of Rhodes did not actually exist in the past. It is not a sterile historical relic, or some accurate record of prior events. It is a piece of self-conscious propaganda designed to present an ennobled image of Rhodes for as long as it stands. […] If anyone was trying to erase the past – specifically the history of subjugation and suffering on which his fortune was built – it was Rhodes. I had to wonder why many eminent white commentators were so attached to him.”

These reflections relate to the theme of how historical events are remembered and commemorated. In Arendt’s words, “all historiography is necessarily salvation and frequently justification”, thus how do you write historically about something you do not want to conserve, but on the contrary, feel engaged to destroy? And how are some memories socially organized so as to cover over other memories? In the histories of anti-fascist resistance, the slogan ¡No pasarán! (They shall not pass!) was taken over from the Spanish Civil War, ultimately lost by the Republican troops, to the Battle of Cable Street, London, where the local East End Jews, Irish, socialists and communists won against the police and Oswald Mosley’s supporters. We may also pose questions over conflicts over how to imagine anti-fascist resistance, contemporary as well as historically.

“Since it would be impossible for fascism to win the masses through rational arguments,” wrote Adorno, “its propaganda must necessarily be deflected from discursive thinking; it must be oriented psychologically, and has to mobilize irrational, unconscious, regressive processes.” In line with this reasoning, this conference is concerned with fascist images, the fascist imagination, how this ideology appeals to and aims to stir up affects and fantasies, conscious and unconscious, about self and others, pasts and futures, bodies, boundaries, threats and desires, hardness and fluidity. We encourage contributions that consider fascism and fascist movements and tendencies from different geographical perspectives and locations, and that engage with different aspects of this theme, not just in the past, but in our present.

***

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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, attending the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com by June 28th 2021. We will respond by, and present a full programme on July 10th 2021.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes one shared three course dinner with wine, of € 385 before August 1st 2021 – € 495 between August 1st 2021 and September 4th 2021 – € 585 after September 4th, is to be paid before the symposium.

Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including payment is completed. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Berlin Psychoanalytical Institute.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will aim to make a reservation at a nearby hotel with a group discount. You will contact this (or another) hotel individually to book your room. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly.

Non-exclusive list of some relevant literature
Adorno, T. W. (1951/1982) “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum.
Adorno, T. W. (1966/1998) “Education After Auschwitz” in Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords, New York: Columbia University Press.
Anzieu, D. (2001) “Freud’s Group Psychology. Background, Significance and Influence” in E. Spector Person ed. On Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”. Hillsdale, NJ/ London: The Analytic Press.
Arendt, H. (1951/2004) The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, H. (1953/1994) “A Reply to Eric Voegelin” in Essays in Understanding 1930-1954, J. Kohn ed. New York: Schocken Books.
Auestad, L. ed. (2014) Nationalism and the Body Politic: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Etnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac/ Routledge.
Auestad, L. (2015) Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice. A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination. London: Karnac/ Routledge.
Borossa, J. ed. (2010) Psychoanalysis, Fascism and Fundamentalism. Special issue of Psychoanalysis and History. Edinburgh University Press.
Chigudu, S. (2021) “‘Colonialism had never really ended’: my life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes” in The Guardian, Jan. 14th https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jan/14/rhodes-must-fall-oxford-colonialism-zimbabwe-simukai-chigudu
Davis, A. (1981) Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House.
Erós, F. (2014) “”Budapest, the capital of Hungarians”: rhetoric, images and symbols of the Hungarian extreme right movements” in L. Auestad ed. Nationalism and the Body Politic: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac/Routledge.
Freud, S. (1912-1913) Totem and Taboo. SE, vol. 13.
Freud, S. (1914) On Narcissism: An Introduction. SE, vol. 14.
Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. SE, vol. 18.
Freud, S. (1921c) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. SE, vol. 18.
Freud, S. (1939a [1937-39]) Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays, SE, vol. 23.
Fromm, E. (1997) The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Pimlico.
Gandesha, S. ed. (2020) Specters of Fascism. Historical, Theoretical and International Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Kaplan, S. (2019) Children in Genocide: Extreme Traumatization and Affect Regulation. Routledge.
Paxton, R. (2004) The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage Books.
Payne, S. G. (1980) Fascism, Comparison and Definition. University of Wisconsin Press.
Reich, W. (1997) The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Souvenir Press.
Sklar, J. (2019) Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning. UK: Phoenix.
Stanley, J. (2018) How Fascism Works. The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House.
Theweleit, K. (1987) Male Fantasies. Vol. I Women, floods, bodies, history. Cambridge, UK/ Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press.

Call for papers – spring symposium in the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association, Västerlånggatan 60, 111 29 Stockholm, May 10^th-12^th 2019

“I am under no illusion”, wrote Freud (1912-1913) “that in putting forward these attempted explanations I am laying myself open to the charge of endowing modern savages with a subtlety in their mental activities which exceeds all probability. It seems to me quite possible, however, that the same may be true of our attitude towards the psychology of those races that have remained at the animistic level as it is true of our attitude towards the mental life of children, which we adults no longer understand and whose fullness and delicacy of feeling we have in consequence so greatly underestimated” (98-99). There appears to be a double movement in this passage, a movement of distancing in the contrast between the more and the less developed, alongside a movement of approximation. As Frosh (2013) puts it, “psychoanalysts often draw on the language of the ‘primitive’ to refer to ‘unreasoning’ elements of people’s psychic lives. Thus, a notion that someone might be evincing a ‘primitive fantasy of destruction’ is a very familiar one, but what is not acknowledged is that this terminology not only has its roots in a colonial opposition between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’, but it also reproduces this division ‘unconsciously’ when it is employed.” Edward Said (2003) has famously emphasized the opposite movement, Freud’s refusal to erect an insurmountable barrier between ‘the primitive’ and ‘the civilized’, Freud as “an overturner and a re-mapper of accepted or settled geographies and genealogies” (27). Late in Freud’s theories, in Khanna’s words, “the “scene of memory” always necessitates a consideration of the splits that come to be acknowledged in the ego, which are like the interferences caused by the memory’s insistent confrontation with a false unified and unifying sense of history and the subject” – “The age of colonial travel and exploration was that of Freud’s youth. That of his old age was the moment of Nazi suppression. The future, to which he referred when writing of his threatened children, would be that of the split and defensive ego, when a nation-state would be unable to exist without rupture and beyond betrayal” (64).

‘Colonial fantasies’ referred to in the title may be understood as fantasies to the effect that the other, and the other’s territory, is yours to take and yours to denounce because inferior – less efficient, less rational and/or less complete in some sense. These inferior others and their domains may be eroticised. To Sander Gilman, “Central to the model and to the understanding of the Other is the definition of the Other in sexual terms, for no factor in nineteenth-century self-definition was more powerful than the sense of sexual pathology” (216). “The Other’s pathology is revealed in her anatomy, and the black and the prostitute are both bearers of the stigmata of sexual difference and thus pathology. […] The “white man’s burden,” his sexuality and its control, is displaced onto the need to control the sexuality of the Other, the Other as sexualized female” (1985, 107). In Freud’s writing, to Gilman, the rhetoric of race was excised only to reappear in his construction of gender “through the assumption of the neutrality of the definition of the (male) scientist” (1993, 40). “Freud [1926e] explains that “we need not feel ashamed” about our lack of knowledge of female sexuality, he metaphorizes woman as the “dark continent,” and in this blurring of her specificity he transfers the shame that “we need not feel” about our lack of knowledge onto her” (Khanna, 2003, 49). H. M. Stanley introduced the metaphor of the “dark continent” in his explorer’s narrative of Africa, and here it comes to stand for the other of man and of Europe.

The tendency to de-situate the psychoanalytic subject, to think of the direction of communication and meaning-formation as proceeding from the internal world to the external, and forgetting about the subject as being in a position of receptivity (Auestad 2012, 2015, Dalal 2002, Laplanche 1999) has a bearing on these questions. “The reality of an other who addresses one, separate from an other “in-itself” or an other “for-me” is easily lost from view and the habitual thought of the “I-as-subject” and the “other-as-object” reasserted. Oliver emphasises the cost of such abstractions: “Existentialist and psychoanalytic notions of alienation as inherent in all subjectivity are constructed against a dark and invisible underside, the alienation of domination, slavery, and colonization. […] The free-floating guilt and anxiety inherent in the human condition described by philosophers of alienation can in itself be diagnosed as a symptom of a concrete guilt over the oppression and domination that guaranteed white privilege. The thesis that alienation, guilt, and anxiety are inherent in the human condition works to cover over this guilt in the face of specific others against whom the white subject has constituted itself as privileged” (2004: 1-2). The complex affective dynamics of such oppression and domination have been addressed through psychoanalytical interpretations which have taken account of social and economic realities: “I said in my introduction that man is a yes. I will never stop reiterating that. Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity. But man is also a no. No to scorn of man. No to degradation of man. No to exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most human in man: freedom” (Fanon 1986, 222).

Discussions of decolonialization have been revived in the recent years with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Cape Town, starting in March 2015, where the initial demand to take down the statue of Cecil Rhodes quickly became a student-led mass movement for decolonising education which grew to include black academics and campus workers. Oxford Students started their own campaign in response. A YouGov poll from 2014 found that 59% of the British public declared that they were proud of the British Empire; 19% said they were ashamed of it. A study at Oxford showed that 59% of BME students felt uncomfortable/ unwelcome because of their race or ethnicity, compared to 5% of white students (RMFO, 2018). “Oxford has less than a handful of Black professors, much like the UK as a whole, wherein only 0.4% of professors are Black. This oppressive racial atmosphere took shape in rather curious situations, for example as experienced by Black students who entered Oxford as late as 2013, to find the African studies library was located in the Cecil Rhodes House. One can only imagine how Jewish students might feel if the Jewish studies library was located in an ‘Adolf Hitler House'” (RMFO, 2018, xix). In the US, in August 2017, in the aftermath of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Donald Trump tweeted, in an attack on the efforts to remove Confederate statues from public spaces: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments” (Cain, 2017). The Confederate monuments represented an attempt to influence the view of a movement which sought to break up the US and establish a new nation based on slavery. Thus, today’s calls for decolonization are contrasted by the far right’s and conservative appeals to an idealised tradition which is to be protected from closer scrutiny.

In commemorating historical events and public figures, we are telling future generations what should matter to them and who they should hold in esteem. Some events are commemorated and others left out, some texts and authors are included in various curricula, others are marginalized and judged as irrelevant to our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings. As opposed to ‘diversity’, ‘decolonization’ implies critical examination of past injustices, thinking of contemporary practices in terms of rectificatory justice, reparations for past and ongoing injuries. Thus ‘decolonisation’ involves reflecting on social, implicit and unconscious practices that shape who various spaces are for, such as the university, the therapy room, and other public, semi-public, or closed spaces. This would involve imaginary efforts that run counter to our habitual tendency to avoid thinking about half-hidden violence: “We turn away from a body, or bodies, that cannot claim to be inhabiting conditions that facilitate the body to pass as civilised” (Treacher Kabesh, 2017, 191). “Think of the expression “stick out like a sore thumb”,” writes Ahmed, describing the structures of institutional life. “To stick out can mean to become a sore point, or even to experience oneself as being a sore point. […] Perhaps lightness and buoyancy are the affects of privilege – the affective worlds inhabited by those whose bodies don’t weigh them down or hold them up” (2012, 41, 181). We may think of how to understand these dynamics from a range of positions, and reflect on how change is achieved. Conversely, we might examine the fantasies and affects involved in contemporary colonial fantasies and strategies of domination and question what dreams are involved in these scenarios.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to
psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com by December 10^th 2018. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on December 20^th 2018. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes a shared dinner with wine, of € 349 before February 20^th 2019 – € 449 between February 20^th 2019 and April 1^st 2019 – € 529 after April 1^st, is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be paid via EventBrite (EventBrite fees are not included in the price).

Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including payment is completed. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after January 20^th 2018. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly.

Non-exclusive list of some relevant literature

Ahmed, S. (2012) On Being Included. Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham/ London: Duke University Press.

Auestad, L. (2012) “Subjectivity and Absence: Prejudice as a Psycho-Social Theme” in L. Auestad ed. Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Auestad, L. ed. (2012) Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Auestad, L. ed. (2014) Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentricm and Xenophobia. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Auestad, L. (2015) Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice. A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Auestad, L. ed. (2017) Shared Traumas, Silent Loss, Public and Private Mourning. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Auestad, L., Treacher Kabesh, A. eds. (2017) Traces of Violence and Freedom of Thought. London/ New York: Palgrave.

Borossa, J. (2012) “The Extensions of Psychoanalysis: Colonialism, Post-Colonialism, and Hospitality” in L. Auestad ed. (2012) Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Cain, A. (2017) “‘Is it George Washington next week?’ Trump asked as Confederate statues begin to fall around the US – here’s their disturbing history”, Business Insider, Aug. 17^th.

Dalal, F. (2002) Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization. London/ New York: Routledge.

de Jong, S. R. Icaza, O. U. Rutazibwa eds. (2019) Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning. London/ New York: Routledge.

Fanon, F. (1986) Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press.

Fanon, F. (1967) The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books.

Fanon, F./ J. Khalfa, R.C. Young eds. (2018) Alienation and Freedom. London/ New York/ Oxford/ New Delhi/ Sydney: Bloomsbury.

Freud, S. (1912-1913) Totem and Taboo. SE, vol. 13.

Freud, S. (1921c). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. SE, vol. 18.

Freud, S. (1926e) The Question of Lay Analysis. SE, vol. 20.

Freud, S. (1939a [1937-39]) Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays, SE, vol. 23.

Frosh, S. (2013) “Psychoanalysis, colonialism, racism” in Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33(3), 141-154.

Gilman, S. (1985) Difference and Pathology. Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. London/ Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Gilman, S. (1993) Freud, Race, and Gender. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Khanna, R. (2003) Dark Continents. Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. London/ Durham: Duke University Press.

Laplanche, J. (1989) “The Unfinished Copernican Revolution” in Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge, 52-83.

Maher, M. J. (2012) Racism and Cultural Diversity: Cultivating Racial Harmony through Counselling,Group Analysis and Psychotherapy. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Morris, R. C. ed. (2010) Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia University Press.

Oliver, K. (2004) The Colonization of Psychic Space. A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression. London/ Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Palacios. M. (2017) “Politicising Trauma – A Post-Colonial and Psychoanalytic Conceptual Intervention” in L. Auestad ed. Shared Traumas, Silent Loss, Public and Private Mourning. London: Karnac/ Routledge.

Rhodes Must Fall Oxford/ R. Chantiluke, B. Kwoba, A. Nkopo eds. (2018) Rhodes Must Fall. The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of the Empire. London: Zed Books.

Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.

Said, E. W. (1994) Culture & Imperialism. London: Vintage.

Said, E. W. (2003) Freud and the Non-European. London/ New York: Verso.

Treacher Kabesh, A. (2017) “Troubling States of Mind. Sacrificing the Other” in L. Auestad, A. Treacher Kabesh, eds. Traces of Violence and Freedom of Thought. London/ New York: Palgrave.

Call for papers – spring symposium in the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society, May 18th-20th 2018,
Avenida da República 97, 5⁰ , 1050-190, Lisboa

“One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat. “What!” cried the Ants in surprise, “haven’t you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?” “I didn’t have time to store up any food,” whined the Grasshopper; “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone.” The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust. “Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!” And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work” (Aesop ca. 600 BC). This fable can be read as advocating austerity and condemning as irresponsible the grasshopper’s orientation towards the pleasure and joy of the moment. To Yanis Varoufakis (2016), “Any narrative of this type,” referring to a recent myth where Greeks (primarily) are cast as the grasshoppers and Germans (primarily) as the ants, “is terribly misleading as a description of the causes of our current crisis”.

The word ‘austerity’ derives from Latin ‘austerus’, severe, and denotes 1) sternness or severity in manner or attitude, plainness or simplicity in appearance, or 2) difficult economic conditions created by government measure to reduce public expenditure. As a political-economic term it refers to policies that aim to reduce budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. Since governments that tend to push through austerity tend to come from the right, they have an ideological preference for lower taxes and a smaller state and would thus aim to cut state spending. These measures tend to increase unemployment and reduce consumption. On the basis of classic liberal ideas austerity emerged as a doctrine of neoliberalism in the 20^th Century.

To Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Austerity has failed repeatedly, from its early use under US President Herbert Hoover, which turned the stock-market crash into the Great Depression, to the IMF “programs” imposed on East Asia and Latin America in recent decades. And yet, when Greece got into trouble, it was tried again.” Though Greece succeeded in converting a primary budget deficit into a primary surplus, the contraction in government spending led to “25% unemployment, a 22% fall in GDP since 2009, and a 35% increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio” (2015).

To Amartya Sen, after 2008,  “There was an odd confusion in policy thinking between the real need for institutional reform in Europe and the imagined need for austerity – two quite different things”, and cutting public expenditure did not serve the cause of institutional reform. Sen makes the point that economic growth is needed if we want to reduce public debt, and austerity is essentially anti-growth. Second, while the public debt-to GDP ratio was considerably larger in Britain from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s than at any time since the crisis in 2008. Yet at that time, Britain was confidently building a welfare state rather than panicking.

Welfare states are now in process of being dismantled, and redistribution takes place, within nations from poorer to richer citizens, and similarly between them. The one dominant discourse still standing is the economic one. In Paul Verhaege’s words: “We live in a neoliberal society in which everything has become a product. Furthermore, this is linked to a so-called meritocracy in which everyone is held responsible for their own success or failure – the myth of the self-made man.” Within this logic, the most important criterion is profit, or money. Matters that until recently were human rights, such as medical care, education and a free press, have become commodities, negotiable objects, and, at least in part, privileges. The individual has a duty to succeed according to an “objective” standard that is set externally. In a management culture where efficiency becomes the highest and indeed, the only good the individual is no longer willing to make sacrifices for the organisation, but is only interested in what it can provide. “In concrete terms this means that everything is measured, preferably quite literally, in terms of production, growth and profit. To conduct these measurements each organisation must make frequent evaluations, which within a short space of time take on the air of formal inspections. After all everyone is now suspect because everyone is out for their own good.” Arguably, this state of affairs results in a shift from intrinsic to extrinsic motivation, a loss of autonomy and an erosion of trust.

On the level of affect, this recalls Adorno’s description of ‘the coldness of isolated competitors’, “people completely cold who cannot endure their own coldness and yet cannot change it. Every person today, without exception, feels too little loved, because every person cannot love enough” (1966). “What recourse does a child have if he is uncontained?” asks Carvalho (2002). “One answer might be identification with the figure that fails to contain, and the fantasy of occupying the object. […] The logic of this is supplied by Matte Blanco’s formulation of the basic matrix, as well as by the characteristics of the infinite set in which the individual may experience himself as indistinguishable from his objects, who in turn may be indistinguishable from one another. […] The statement, in an infinite set where symmetrical logic is predominant, ‘Mummy dismisses B’ is interchangeable with ‘B dismisses Mummy’ or, of course, ‘the analyst dismisses B’.” Or, in Adorno’s formulation, “Whoever is hard with himself earns the right to be hard with others as well and avenges himself for the pain whose manifestation he was not allowed to show and had to repress.”

An idea proposed by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents (1930) is that individuals are expect to live up to an ideal image imposed on them by society. Their failure to do so, and even their success, lead to forms of suffering. We may assume that different social structures will lead to different areas of tension between individuals and society, between different individuals within a society and within the individuals themselves. We invite papers that problematize the relation between today’s politics and ideology of austerity and people’s fantasies, affects, defences – and that reflect on the barriers to and possibilities for affective and social renewal.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to moc.liamgnull@scitilop.sisylanaohcysp by January 20^th 2018. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on February 1^st 2018. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes a shared dinner with wine, of € 299 before March 1^st 2018 – € 377 between March 1^st 2018 and April 10^th 2018 – € 455 after April 10^th, is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be paid via Picatic (Picatic fees are not included in the price). Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including payment is completed. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after January 20^th 2018. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly: https://www.psa-pol.org/?page_id=363

Non-exclusive list of some relevant literature

Adorno, T. W. (1966) “Education after Auschwitz” in Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Aesop (ca. 600 BC) “The Ants & the Grasshopper”, Library of Congress Aesop Fables.

Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Second Edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Auestad, L. ed. (2012). Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation.London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2014). Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2017). Shared Traumas, Silent Loss, Public and Private Mourning. London: Karnac.

Brown, W. (2005) Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford.

Carvalho, R. (2002). Psychic Retreats Revisited: Binding Primitive Destructiveness, or Securing the Object? A Matter of Emphasis?. Brit. J. Psychother., 19(2):153-171

Freud, S. (1915) The unconscious. In Standard Edition, Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press.

Freud, S. (1917) Mourning and melancholia. In Standard Edition, Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press.

Freud, S. (1930) Civilization and its Discontents. In Standard Edition, Vol. 21. London: Hogarth Press.

Lennon-Patience, S. (2013). Measuring a Nation’s Well-Being: A Psycho-Cultural Investigation. Free Associations, 14(1):14-36

Matte Blanco, I. (1975) The Unconscious as Infinite Sets. London: Duckworth.

Matte Blanco, I. (1988) Thinking, Feeling and Being. London: Routledge.

Sen, A. (2015) “The economic consequences of austerity”, New Statesman, June 4^th.

Stiglitz, J. E. (2015) “A Greek Morality Tale”, Project Syndicate, Feb. 3^rd.

Varoufakis, Y. (2016) And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability. London: Vintage.

Verhaege, P. (2012) “Capitalism and Psychology – Identity and Angst: on Civilisation’s New Discontent” in Veermeersch, W. ed. Belgian Society and Politics.

Call for papers, spring symposium in the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP),
(21 rue Daviel – 75013 Paris)
March 31^st-April 2^nd 2017

Speakers include:
PINA ANTINUCCI (Psychoanalyst, British Psychoanalytical Society) – Encountering the Uncanny
JIM GRABOWSKI (Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Institute for Clinical Social Work) – Department of Abuse and Neglect: A Confusion of the Tongues in Chicago Child Welfare
SCOTT GRAYBOW (Psychotherapist, adjunct professor, Metropolitan College of New York) – Fearing the News: On the Role of Fear in the Social Character of American, White, Working Class Males

Asserting that the first situational phobias of children are those of darkness and solitude, Freud wrote; “While I was in the next room, I heard a child who was afraid of the dark call out: ‘Do speak to me, Auntie! I’m frightened!’ ‘Why, what good would that do? You can’t see me.’ To this the child replied: ‘If someone speaks, it gets lighter.’ Thus a longing felt in the dark is transformed into a fear of the dark” (1916-1917 [1915-1917], 407). The reason why a child is frightened of a strange face, he reflected, is his adjustment to the sight of a familiar and beloved figure – that of his mother. “It is his disappointment and longing that are transformed into anxiety” – having become unemployable, his libido is discharged as anxiety (407). In 1920, Freud declared that fright, fear and anxiety can be clearly distinguished in their relation to danger. While fear requires a definite object, anxiety is a state of expecting or preparing for danger, though the danger may be unknown, and fright emphasizes the factor of surprise, occurring when someone has run into danger without being prepared for it (1920g). He later abandoned this distinction in favour of describing automatic anxiety and anxiety as a signal, with a felt situation of helplessness at its core, whether the danger is internal or external; “the essence and meaning of a danger-situation […] consists in the subject’s estimation of his own strength compared to the magnitude of the danger and in his admission of helplessness in the face of it – physical helplessness if the danger is real and psychical helplessness if the danger is instinctual” (1926d [1925], 137). Anxiety consists both in the expectation of a trauma and a repetition of it in a mitigated form. “A danger-situation is a recognized, remembered, expected situation of helplessness. Anxiety is the original reaction to helplessness in the trauma and is reproduced later on in the danger-situation as a signal for help. The ego, which experienced the trauma passively, now repeats it actively in a weakened version, in the hope of being able itself to direct its course. It is certain that children behave in this fashion towards every distressing impression they receive, by reproducing it in their play” (166-167). The latter observation may lead to questions of how fear is handled culturally, depicted, denied, displaced, nourished, detested or enjoyed.

The political theorist who most famously draws on fear as a reason and foundation for submitting to political organization is Thomas Hobbes (1651), who referred to our fear of being killed by each other and declared that the sovereign’s role is to safeguard the subjects’ right to life. As Corey Robin points out (2004, 53), Montesquieu too, though less explicitly, turned to fear as a foundation for politics, the fear of despotism authorizing his liberal state where mediating institutions keep each other in check so as to avoid a too large concentration of power. Interestingly, the idea of a negative ground for human association recurs in Menzies Lyth (1960) and in Elliot Jaques, “one of the primary cohesive elements […] is that of defence against psychotic anxiety” (1955, 497).

“Upon this a question arises”, wrote Machiavelli (1515), “whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved”, since “men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails”. Descriptively and normatively, views differ as to whether fear is needed as a civilizing factor. Perhaps most strongly against its employment was Winnicott, stating that “moral education follows naturally on the arrival of morality in the child by the natural developmental processes that good care facilitates” (1965, 100). In present day politics fear is most notably evoked in connection with the figures of foreigners, Muslims and terrorists, sometimes combined into one. Terror might be thought of as recreation of terror, as a staging of revenge, or as merging with a higher purpose (Nosek, Erlich 2003). Fear, in Ahmed’s words, “is named in the very naming of terrorism; terrorists are immediately identified as agents of extreme fear, that is, those who seek to make others afraid (2014, 72) Thus “We can recall the repetition of stereotypes about the black man in the encounter described by Frantz Fanon: this repetition works by generating the other as the object of fear, a fear which is then taken on by the other, as its own (75-76). This is to evoke the theme of who fears who, who is posited as fear-invoking, and of how, in defending against fear we may create more fear, solidifying a shared fantasy into a social reality.

The topic of transformations of affects, how fear or anxiety may arise as a result of sexual desire or aggression, or in turn be changed into other affects such as guilt or hate, may lead to questions of how fear relate to sexuality in sexism and homophobia. To Winnicott, fear of WOMAN (in both men and women) is rooted in early dependence upon one’s mother, not remembered or acknowledged, “responsible for the immense amount of cruelty to women”, and he hypothesised that “One of the roots of the need to be a dictator can be a compulsion to deal with this fear of woman by encompassing her and acting for her” (1965, 252, 253). To Chodorow, “Masculinity defines itself as not-femininity and not-mother, in a way that femininity is not cast primarily as not-masculinity or not-father” (2003, 103). Furthermore: “Masculinity is not being a boy-child in relation to adult father” and “The worst male violence may occur when fantasies of humiliation by men (The man-boy dichotomy) become linked with fears of feminization and loss of selfhood (the male-female dichotomy)” (99) – and split-off qualities are attacked in the other who is seen as their representative. We might also refer to Kristeva’s thoughts on how “I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish myself (1982, 3). In reflecting on internalized homophobia as potentially applicable to anyone, Moss describes the original source of anxiety as the idea that a particular homoerotic impulse is dangerous. When it becomes externalized the idea is projected and reconfigured into a perception: “One thinks danger alone, but one sees it in company. The plural voice sees danger and hates its carrier. The idiosyncratic singular voice thinks danger and aims, alone, to avert it. The difference between the plural and singular voices is the difference between what seems like knowledge and what seems like feeling” (2003, 204).

We invite proposals for papers that explore conscious and unconscious fear and its social and political vicissitudes.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to moc.liamgnull@scitilop.sisylanaohcysp by October 5^th 2016. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on October 15^th 2016. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes a shared dinner with wine, of € 299 before November 15^th 2016 – € 377 between November 15^th 2016 and January 15^th 2017 – € 455 after January 15^th, is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be paid via Picatic (Picatic fees are not included in the price). Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including payment is completed. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP).

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after November 15th 2016. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly: https://www.psa-pol.org/?page_id=363

Non-exclusive list of some relevant literature

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E. Levinson, D. J., Sanford, R. N, (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Adorno, T. W. (1967). “Education After Auschwitz” in Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Second Edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Alford, C. F. (1997). What Evil Means to Us. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Auestad, L. ed. (2012). Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2014). Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac.

Chodorow, N. (2003). “Hate, humiliation, and masculinity” in S. Varvin/V. Volkan eds. Violence or Dialogue? Psychoanalytic Insights on Terror and Terrorism. London: International Psychoanalytical Association.

Erlich, S. (2003). “Reflections on the terrorist mind” in S. Varvin/V. Volkan eds. Violence or Dialogue? Psychoanalytic Insights on Terror and Terrorism. London: International Psychoanalytical Association.

Freud, S. (1916-1917 [1915-1917]). Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III). SE, vol. XVI, 241-463.

Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. SE, vol. XVIII, 1-64.

Freud, S. (1921c). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. SE, vol. XVIII, 65-144.

Freud, S. (1926d [1925]). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. SE, vol. XX, 75-176.

Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/index.html

Jaques, E. (1955). “Social Systems as a defence against Persecutory and Depressive Anxiety” in M. Klein, P. Heimann and R. Money-Kyrle eds. New Directions in Psycho-Analysis. London: Tavistock.

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

Machiavelli, N. (1515). The Prince. Translated by W. K. Marriott, 1908. http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

Menzies Lyth, I. (1960). “Social Systems as a Defense Against Anxiety: An Empirical Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital” in E. Trist and H. Murray eds. The Social Engagement of Social Science Vol. 1. London: Free Association Books, 1990.

Moss, D. (2003). “Internalized Homophobia in Men: Wanting in the First Person Singular, Hating in the First Person Plural” in D. Moss ed. Hating in the First Person Plural. Psychoanalytic Essays on Racism, Homophobia, Misogyny, and Terror. New York: Other Press.

Nosek, L. (2003). “Terror in everyday life: revisiting Mr Kurtz” in S. Varvin/V. Volkan eds. Violence or Dialogue? Psychoanalytic Insights on Terror and Terrorism. London: International Psychoanalytical Association.

Robin, C. (2004). Fear: The History of a Political Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Winnicott, D.W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. The International Psycho-Analytical Library, 64:1-276. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.

Call for papers, spring symposium in Vienna May 6^th-8^th 2016

Questions of what founds and undermines solidarity appear central today. Psychoanalysis, however, may be said to have addressed the notion of solidarity only marginally. In ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ Freud asserts that “human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals” and posits this togetherness as the “decisive step of civilization” (Freud, 1930, 94 – 95). In this sense, there is scope for further enquiry into solidarity as the core of civilization and its motivations.

To Kropotkin (1998), mutual aid within a species is an important factor in the evolution of social institutions. Solidarity is essential to mutual aid; supportive activity towards other people does not result from the expectation of reward, but rather from instinctive feelings of solidarity.

Hoelzl (2004) raises the problem of the particularity of solidarity; Aristotle’s ethics understood friendship in terms of a network among male Aristocrats within the polis. Since, however, only Aristocratic and wealthy men were eligible for a friendship that constituted the social bond of the community, the politics of friendship was elitist and linked to personal wealth. The shift from solidarity among friends to solidarity with strangers summarizes the problem of universal solidarity and identifies a problematic source in the history of the concept. This raises the question of whether or to what extent solidarity is restricted to identification based on similarity, and to what extent it can go beyond perceived similarity.

Jürgen Habermas describes solidarity as standing in for one another. While Habermas’ discourse-ethics examines successful interactions of understanding, Axel Honneth’s critical social theory also takes negative practices of misrecognition into account. Solidarity is seen as one form or pattern of recognition, with law and love as two other forms. Humiliation and insulting acts are seen as the negative counterpart to solidarity. Habermas’s theory of communicative action and Honneth’s social theory of recognition share the Hegelian assumption of recognition as reciprocal. Because of the asymmetrical relationship between the master and the slave, an asymmetrical act of solidarity is understood as a deficient mode of reciprocal solidarity. Asymmetrical acts of solidarity establish the master-slave relationship and therefore bondage. In contrast, Hoelzl (2004) asserts that further to recognition, the individual must be willing to occupy the position of sacrificial victim given that solidarity, in its most radical form, may mean giving one’s life for the other. Questions may be raised, in this sense, on the nature, dynamics and stakes of solidarity and solidary acts. How far can acts of solidarity be unilateral? What do they presuppose in terms of mutuality, individual investments and social relationships? Further, what distinguishes solidarity from related emotions such as empathy, compassion, pity and love?

We may, furthermore, ask what constitutes the opposite of solidarity. Amongst several conceivable opposing poles such as egoism, disengagement or radical individuality, alienation is arguably at the core of its decline. Consensual definitions posit alienation as separateness and estrangement of the subject from the other, the social group and social institutions leading into a meaningless, inauthentic existence (Skelton, 2006). Questions can be raised as to whether alienation indeed undermines solidarity or constitutes its negative condition of possibility.

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology and capitalism are said to have a causal relation with alienation, as Gerlach (2009) states paraphrasing Marx, “when the life [the subject] has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force.” Alienation is thus characterised by the universal extension of “saleability” – the transformation of everything into commodity – the conversion of human beings into “things” to appear as commodities on the market – the “reification” of human relations – and by the fragmentation of the social body into “isolated individuals” who pursue their own limited, particularistic aims, making a virtue out of their selfishness in a cult of privacy (Mészáros, 1970).

Paul Verhaege’s contemporary diagnosis links alienation today with an increase in systems of monitoring and measurement and an ethic of competition where effectiveness is postulated as the highest aim:  “Only the best – that is, the most productive – are to be rewarded, so a measuring system is devised. Quality criteria are then imposed by the powers that be, fairly soon followed by a rigid top-down approach to quality that stifles individual initiative. Autonomy and individual control vanish, to be replaced by quantitative evaluations, performative interviews, and audits. From then on, things go from bad to worse. Deprived of a say over their own work, employees become less committed (‘They don’t listen anyway’), and their sense of responsibility diminishes (‘As long as I do things by the book, they can’t touch me’). […] This harmful trend is destroying work ethos and, in the long run, communal ethos as well” (Verhaege 169-170). Thus competition undermines solidarity and external measurement systems renders the product of one’s labour unrecognizable and alien.

Fromm (1955), describes the alienated subject as being “out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person”, leading into different social visible forms of alienation such as over-conformity and non-commitment. Primitive anxieties and forms of attachment are said to pre-date alienation if understood as an individual or social schizoid phenomenon (Lerner, 1985). Different philosophical schools, furthermore, relate alienation to dialectical recognition and estrangement (Hegel 1807; Marx, Engels, 1846); absurdity of meaninglessness and nihilism (Sartre, 1938), loss of connection with God (Kierkegaard, 1849) and third-personal relationships to the I and the other (Heidegger, 1927; Buber, 1923). A thread can be found from Rousseau’s ideas on alienation from nature to psychoanalytic conceptualisations, and parallels could be drawn with Winnicott’s (1965) concepts of the true and the false self, though ‘false self’ formations are not linked with an account of social structures. We might refer to Menzies Lyth’s descriptions of a ‘forced introjection of a social defence system’ that ‘relied heavily on violent splitting’ to ask what forms of splitting (not necessarily always negative) are socially required of people today and about their consequences for our sense of solidarity and alienation. For Durkheim (1897), anomie is common when society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse, and when there is a major discrepancy between the ideology and values commonly professed and what is achievable in one’s everyday life.

Lynd (1961) suggests that alienation understood as separation may have beneficent as well as terrifying aspects. Regarding the former, the myth motif of the wandering prophet “is the precondition for the discovery of that which is newer and older and more real than the parochial customs of the village” (170), versions of which can be found in Anna Karenina, Bread and Wine, and Doctor Zhivago. “The true prophet”, argues Lynd, “goes into the unexplored wilderness and […] returns to be a leader and life-giver to his people” (170), alienation being the precondition of this experience. Going beyond the settlement “and setting one’s face toward the more enduring, universal realities, involves conflict with many accepted social forms” (170). In this sense, questions can be raised on the hopeful potential of alienation itself and its potential to unsettle social establishments.

We invite contributions on these and related questions.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is obligatory. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to moc.liamgnull@scitilop.sisylanaohcysp by December 5^th 2015. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on December 15^th 2015. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes two shared dinners, of £180 (or €254) before January 15^th 2016 – £230 (or €325) between January 15^th and March 15^th 2016 – £280 (or €396) after March 15^th, is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be paid via Eventbrite (Eventbrite fees are not included in the price). Your place is only confirmed once we have received your registration including payment is completed. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after January 15th 2016. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NB: Please make sure you read the Guide for abstracts thoroughly: https://www.psa-pol.org/?page_id=363

Non-exclusive list of relevant literature

Auestad, L. ed. 2012. Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2013) Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. 2011. Splitting, attachment and instrumental rationality. A re-view of Menzies Lyth’s social criticism. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 16, 394-410.

Buber, M. 1923. I and Thou. Trans. Walter Kaufman 1970. New York: Touchstone.

Chernomas, R. 2007. Containing Anxieties in Institutions or Creating Anxiety in Institutions: A Critique of the Menzies Lyth Hypothesis. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 12, 369-384.

Durkheim, Emile 1897, 1951. Suicide: a study in sociology. The Free Press.

Ecker, B.J. 1961. Alienation and the Group Analytic Process. Am. J. Psychoanal., 21:273-276.

Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its Discontents. SE Vol. XXI (1927-1931): The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works: 57-146

Fromm, E. The Sane Society. New York: Rinehart, 1955

Gerlach, A. 2009. Fascination, Alienation and Fear of Contact: Ethnopsychoanalytic Considerations on Large-Group Identity. Int. Forum Psychoanal., 18:214-218.

Hegel, G.W.F. 1807. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1987.

Habermas, J. 1991. Gerechtigkeit und Solidarität. 232.

Heidegger, M. 1927. Being and Time. Revised Edition to the Stambaugh Translation. New York: NY State University Press, 2010.

Hoelzl, M. 2004. Recognizing the Sacrificial Victim: The Problem of Solidarity for Critical Social Theory. JCRT.

Honneth, A. 1996. The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Johnson, F. 1975. Psychological Alienation: Isolation and Self-Estrangement. Psychoanal. Rev., 62:369-405

Kierkegaard, S. 1849. The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. – L.: Freedom press, 1998.

Lerner, J.A. 1985. Wholeness, Alienation From Self, and the Schizoid Problem. Am. J. Psychoanal., 45:251-257

Lynd, H.M. 1961. Alienation: Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope. Am. J. Psychoanal., 21:166-171.

Marx, K; Engels, F. 1846. The German Ideology. International Publishers Co. 1970.

Menzies Lyth, I. 1960, 1990. Social systems as a defense against anxiety: An empirical study of the nursing service of a general hospital. In. E. Trist and H. Murray (eds.) The Social Engagement of Social Science Vol. 1: The Socio-Psychological Perspective. London: Free Association Books, pp. 439–462.

Mészáros, I. 1970.  Marx’s Theory of Alienation. On Marxists.org https://www.marxists.org/archive/meszaros/works/alien/meszaro1.htm

Rousseau, J-J. 1968. The Social Contract. London: Penguin Classics.

Sartre, J.P. 1938. Nausea. Trans Robert Baldick, London: Penguin, 2000.

Skelton, R. (Ed.). 2006. The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis.

Verhaege, P. 2014. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society. Melbourne/London: Scribe.

Winnicott, D. W. 1965. “Ego distortion in terms of true and false self”. The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press: 140–157.

MIGRATION, EXILE AND POLYPHONIC SPACES

Call for papers – spring symposium in Barcelona March 20^th-22^nd  2015

“Philosophy, drama, and psychoanalysis each examine exile and return in the grand scheme of the life cycle – exile from the womb, from symbiosis with mother, from motherland, but also from our own reason and passions,” writes Spergel (2012). “Self‐imposed exile is usually a metaphor for the journey of self‐discovery, toward autonomy and self‐empowerment – to explore the forbidden, unacceptable, and transgressive parts of ourselves, our sexuality, our will to power, our hidden identities.” Where ‘exile’, though connoting the pain of banishment, has a ring of individual nobility, ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee’ suggest people conceived as members of herds, deprived of individuality. “Our age,” states Said (2000:174) “is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration”. Arendt reflects on the loss of being recognised as ‘someone’ that follows such a loss of ‘a place in the world’:

The best criterion by which to decide whether someone has been forced outside the pale of the law is to ask if he would benefit from committing a crime. If a small burglary is likely to improve his legal position, […] one may be sure he has been deprived of human rights. […] He is no longer the scum of the earth but important enough to be informed of all the details of the law under which he will be tried. He has become a respectable person. A much less reliable and much more difficult way to rise from an unrecognized anomaly to the status of recognized exception would be to become a genius. […] it is true that the chances of the famous refugee are improved just as a dog with a name has a better chance to survive than a stray dog who is just a dog in general (Arendt [1951]1979:286-287).

Displacement is central in the distortions of the manifest material in the dream work (Freud 1917d [1915]). It consists of the movement of elements from the centrality to the periphery of the dream as well as the replacement of these for an element that merely alludes to them. Analogously, migration and exile may serve similar purposes in the narrative of the individual. Geographical shifts may sometimes follow from defensive movements against anxiety producing or inadmissible motives, impulses and desires. Lacan, however, likens displacement with metonymy, used to explain the ever-moving dynamics of desire. In this sense, a defensive move against inadmissible desire may be another movement in the flow of desire itself. This appears clearly in Greek tragedy as Ananke, or necessity, and is personified by Oedipus who simultaneously runs away from desire in exile, yet unwittingly runs towards it.

Madness and madmen have been described as occupying a liminal topos, or place. In Madness and Civilisation ([1961] 1988), Foucault recounts how during the Renaissance madmen were exiled to wander the rivers of the Rhineland and Flanders in what was called the Ship of Fools. Foucault describes the madman as “the prisoner of passage”, a figure caught in an eternal crossing of a threshold. The eternal passage results in the land of origin and destiny becoming unknown. Besides being a depiction of eternal exile, the loss of origin and destiny is also, notably, the endeavour of the deconstruction of Social Sciences and Western metaphysics (Derrida 1993).

Foucault depicts the madman as enclosed within the limits of the city, or excluded from the city but imprisoned in eternal travel. The same liminal topology remains at play not only in the relation to the mad, insane or disabled, but in the relation between subjectivity and madness as such “if we are willing to admit that what was formerly a visible fortress of order has now become the castle of our conscience”. Lacan’s neologistic notion of extimacy, an external intimacy or an intimate externality, points to a similar topology. He characterises the relation between the subject and the symbolic order and between the subject and the object of desire as internal yet external, and vice versa (1962). These topologies presuppose displacement from traditional notions of belonging as well as dimensions of exile and foreignness at play at once within and without the subject.

Recounting how ‘leprosy’ in medieval Europe corresponded to no precise diagnosis and description, Douglas shows how the category was assigned to vagabonds, beggars and heretics. As part of a generally increased control on sexuality, lepers were held to be incestuous, rapists and highly infectious, and were made to wander or live in segregated settlements (1992:96). Thus ideas of madness, foreignness and disease can be seen to be linked as ‘matter out of place’, again associated with physical segregation, or continuous wandering. Fonseca’s suggestion that Roma narratives may be unique in not referring to a (lost or intact) homeland is of interest in this context:

Nostalgia is the essence of Gypsy song, and seems always to have been. But nostalgia for what? Nostos is Greek for “a return home”; the Gypsies have no home, and, perhaps uniquely among peoples, they have no dream of a homeland. Utopia – ou topos – means “no place”. Nostalgia for utopia: a return home to no place. O lungo drom. The long road (Fonseca 2006:5).

As opposed to the exile, “those who have never been displaced,” writes Kelley (2004:6), “can continue to ask “who am I” from their place of origin.” Yet even people who have remained settled suffer losses due to the passing of time, internal and external. Thus Burkeman remarks on how discourses of cultural nostalgia hook on to, and draw on confusion with, images of one’s own lost childhood, perhaps idealised as a psychic pastoral:

The hazy memory of a simpler past is enormously powerful in politics: see the Tea Party, or the hate-nostalgia of the Daily Mail. But look closely at the era being praised, whether it’s the 40s or the 90’s, and you’ll frequently find the praise-giver was about seven at the time (Burkeman 2014).

In this sense, to Kelley “Exile is the metaphor of the human condition”, the immigrant “a painful reminder of a truth that awaits us all but which we do not quite want to know – just yet (2004:8). Although many psychoanalysts throughout the history of the discipline, Kleimberg observes, were and are immigrants and exiles, they have largely refrained from writing about it, perhaps due to the pain associated with the experience (2004:46). Yet the condition of immigration or exile leads to questions on cultural complexity, compatibility, adaptation or colonisation. “Every emigrant becomes a natural anthropologist, observing, or more pertinently sensing such nuances, and the minute but not insignificant differences in cultural modes of being” (Hoffman 2004:58-59). The question of psychoanalysis’ relation to universality and difference is raised by Borossa, who cites from the Indian analyst Bose’s letter to Freud:

I do not deny the importance of the castration threat in European cases; my argument is that the threat owes its efficiency to its connection with the wish to be a female […] my Indian patients do not exhibit castration symptoms to such a marked degree as my European cases. The desire to be a female is more easily unearthed in Indian male patients than in Europeans. The Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image and this is a fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that much of the motivation of the ‘maternal deity’ is traceable to this source (Bose, cited by Borossa 1997:5).

Questions of the impact of specific cultural conditions and differential histories on the workings of one’s ‘inner world’ are also raised by Preta, who describes the task of contemporary psychoanalysis as that of “establishing a comparison between different anthropological positions”:

In the Western world, where we can see a fragmentation of the subject, psychoanalysis should, above all, help to recompose the Self. The individual tries to find not only a personal meaning but a collective one. On the contrary, in the Eastern world people are oppressed by totalitarian regimes which suffocate individuality. For this reason psychoanalysis is asked to free them from this control of the group. The Iranian psychoanalyst Gohar Homayounpour opposes “the unbearable lightness of being” of the West to the unbearable weight of the Eastern experience. (Preta 2010)

Such considerations may be seen to extend to subtler details of social interactions. For instance, can there be a cross-cultural, or cross-subcultural understanding of what ‘neutrality’ means in the analytic setting? Do the patient and analyst shake hands, do they kiss on both cheeks, or neither? What is the potential for accidentally communicating ‘coldness’ or ‘warmth’ in interactions and in the lay-out of consulting room interiors, depending on the cultural reading of the situation? Emphasising a positive element of the condition of exile, Said remarks on its potential to “diminish orthodox judgment and elevate appreciative sympathy”:

Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that – to borrow a phrase from music is contrapuntal (Said 2000:186).

Where Said describes how, via the exile’s memory, both the new and the old environments may occur together contrapuntally, Lacan stresses how, in addition to a horizontal linearity of a discursive chain, there is a “polyphony” of discourse that aligns each signifier vertically along the several staves of a musical score at any point, constituted through the metaphorical substitution of one signifier by another. Thus the occulted signifier remains present through its connection with the rest of the chain (Clark 2014: 507/157). The coexistence of several languages, and of multilingual subjects, furthermore, raises questions of the role linguistic frameworks plays in one’s thoughts, imaginings, feelings and symbolic elaborations. Consider the role of words in Freud’s study of the Rat Man:

What the rat punishment stirred up more than anything else was his anal eroticism […] rats came to have the meaning of ‘money’. The patient gave an indication of this connection by reacting to the word ‘Ratten‘ [‘rats’] with the association ‘Raten‘ [‘instalments’]. […] Moreover, the captain’s request to him to pay back the charges […] served to strengthen the money significance of rats, by way of another verbal bridge ‘Spielratte‘, which led back to his father’s gambling debt. […] Moreover, all of this material, and more besides, was woven into the fabric of the rat discussions behind the screen-association ‘heiraten‘ [‘to marry’] (Freud 1909:213-215).

Reading these passages makes one wonder to what extent the patient’s symbols and associations would have changed if his native language had been a different one. And what if his analysis had been in a language other than German? What works and what dies in translation, and what elements are musical or preverbal? Perhaps another form of polyphony occurs in the following exchange, as reported by Szekacs-Weiss:

Alice came from Sweden. […] Whenever she felt it was important that I understood what she really meant she stopped and repeated the word in Swedish. Associating to the shades and acoustics of these words took us further, but somehow did not satisfy her wish to be held and understood. One day having given me another word of her mother tongue she expectantly looked at me and I did not think: just said the same word in Hungarian. It had a transformative effect. […] it made it possible for us to go back in time to an age when her basic trust had not been broken into pieces (Szekacs-Weisz 2004:24).

We invite contributions on these and related questions.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians, anthropologists, and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is encouraged and priority will be given to those who plan to do so. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to moc.liamgnull@scitilop.sisylanaohcysp by November 1^st 2014. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on November 15^th 2014. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere is sought. A participation fee, which includes two shared dinners, of £160 (or €200) before December 31^st 2014 – £200 (or €250) between January 1^st and February 15^th 2015 – £250 (or €315) after February 15^th, is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be covered by bank transfer/international bank transfer. Your place is only confirmed once we have received your completed registration form as well as your payment. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the programme has been finalized.

We would like to thank the Spanish Psychoanalytical Society.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after January 1^st 2015. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

NON-EXCLUSIVE LIST OF RELEVANT LITERATURE:

Arendt, H. ([1951]1976) The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego/N.Y./London: Harcourt Brace.

Auestad, L. ed. (2012) Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2013) Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia. London: Karnac.

Borossa, J. (1997). “The migration of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalyst as migrant” Oxford Literary Review, 19(1-2), 79-104.

Burkeman, O. (2014) “It’s not that life used to be simpler, or people less narcissistic. It’s that you got older” on the blog oliverburkeman.com Jan 29th, first published in Guardian Weekend Magazine.

Clark, M. P. (2014). Jacques Lacan (Volume I)(RLE: Lacan): An Annotated Bibliography (Vol. 1). London/New York: Routledge.

Damousi, J./Plotkin, M.N. (2012) Psychoanalysis and Politics. Histories of Psychoanalysis under Conditions of Restricted Political Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, J. (1993). Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. A postmodern reader, 223-242.

Douglas, M. (1992) “Witchcraft and Leprosy. Two Strategies for Rejection” in Risk and Blame. Essays in Cultural Theory. London/New York: Routledge.

Fonseca, I. (2006) Bury Me Standing. The Gypsies and Their Journey. London: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. ([1961] 1988). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Random House LLC.

Freud, S. (1909d). Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis. SE, vol. 10.

Freud, S. (1912-13). Totem and Taboo. SE, vol. 13.

Freud, S. (1917d [1915]) A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams. SE, vol. 14.

Grinberg, L., & Grinberg, R. (1989). Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile. Yale University Press.

Hoffman, E. (2004) “Between Worlds, Between Words” in Szekacs-Weisz, J./Ward, I. eds. (see below)

Kelley-Lainé, K. (2004) “Preface in Three Voices” in Szekacs-Weisz, J./Ward, I. eds. (see below)

Kleimberg, L. (2004) “From Cottage Cheese to Swiss Cottage” in Szekacs-Weisz, J./Ward, I. eds. (see below)

Lacan, J. (1962). Séminaire IX, L’identification (1961-62). Inedit.

Lowe, F. (2014) Thinking Space. Promoting Thinking about Race, Culture, and Diversity in Psychotherapy and Beyond. London: Karnac.

O’Neill, M. (2009). Making connections: Ethno-mimesis, migration and diaspora. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 14(3), 289-302.

Preta, L. (2010) “Geographies of Psychoanalysis” Special issue of Psiche, Journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.

Róheim, G. (1950) Psychoanalysis and Anthropology. New York: International Universities Press.

Said, E. (2000) “Reflections on Exile” in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Spergel, M. (2012)”Exile and Return: The Intersection Between Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the Dramatic Imagination” in Other/Wise vol. 7.

Szekacs-Weisz, J./Ward, I. eds. (2004) Lost Childhood and the Language of Exile. London: Imago East West/ The Freud Museum.

Call for papers – spring symposium in Budapest May 9^th-11^th 2014

Speakers include:

JULIA BOROSSA: Histories of Violence: Outrage, Identification and Being Alongside

FERENC ERÓS: Ferenc Mérei and the Politics of Psychoanalysis in Hungary

ANDRÉ HAYNAL: Listening to Fanaticism. Commentaries of a Psychoanalyst

ÁGNES HELLER The Role of Political Commitment (Weltanschauung) in Autobiographical Memory

KATHLEEN KELLEY From Totalitarian to Democratic Functioning: The Psychic Economy of Infantile Processes

MARGARITA PALACIOS: Guilt and the Politics of Knowing. A Reflection on Post War Academic Cultures

CALL FOR PAPERS: Authority, wrote Said, “is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive” – it “can, indeed must, be analysed” ([1978] 2003). “There is no alternative” is the phrase Thatcher often repeated with reference to economic liberalism. It can be taken as symbolic of the language of power or the rhetorics of oppressive persuasion, more generally.

We are told that there is no alternative to protecting ourselves against ‘others’ who are after stealing scarce jobs and welfare goods, or who pose a threat to security. Hence, it is argued, borders need to be closed, minorities kept at a distance or in a state of submission, and techniques of surveillance are called for. Fear is stirred up and utilised to produce obedience to these demands, presented as fundamental and thus overriding concerns for human rights. In Moïsi’s words “the culture of fear is reducing the qualitative gap that once existed between democratic and nondemocratic regimes, for fear pushes the countries to violate their own moral principles” (2010).

The rhetorics of power may be seen to take on the part-object voice of a persecutory ‘over-I’. Melanie Klein described the ‘I’ as feeling “oppressed and paralysed by the influences of the super-ego”. No other voice or counterdiscourse can be heard for the ‘I’ distrusts “accepting the influences of real objects, often because they are felt to be in complete opposition to the demands of the super-ego, but more often because they are too closely identified with the dreaded internal ones” (Klein, 1931). Right-wing populist discourse, historically as well as today, combines the function of voicing a revolt against authorities with a highly authoritarian stance. Thus it echoes both the voice of the ‘it’ and that of the ‘over-I’, allowing for, or demanding aggression against people posited as ‘other’ or ‘weaker’ than those the listener is impelled to identify with. We might liken this process to identification with the aggressor, leaving behind a mind “which consists only of the id and super-ego” (Ferenczi, 1933), and question whether traumatised societies are more susceptible to such rhetorics of power.

Rhetorics of power employ figures of speech which aim to conceal, distort or even reverse meanings and associations to the presented material. Thus a way of approaching this topic would be to analyse the relevant metaphors and their political implications; what meaning is ‘carried over’ (Gr. metapherein) from where to where, and what is forgotten as a result of this transfer? Think, for instance, of the figure of ‘the parasite’ in recent political discourse. Questions about the use of social and political manipulation can also be raised in terms of ‘master suppression techniques’ (Ås, 2004). These are used by a dominant group to maintain a hierarchy; making invisible/silencing, appeal to ridicule, withholding of information, double bind, and to heap blame on or put someone to shame. One might interrogate the psychic effects of these techniques and potential remedies for them.

Rhetorics of power can become mainstream political discourses and shape people’s ideology by totalising and impeding freedom of thought. This is visible in the current economic, religious and ideological fundamentalisms. Pervasive totalitarian elements efface the distinction between fiction and reality, making ideology true and stifling the imagination. They do not just label thoughts as forbidden but aim to render one unable to think or imagine them. Freud wrote to Ernest Jones in 1933 on the occasion of a mass book burning in Berlin: “What progress we are making! In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me; nowadays they are content with burning my books” (Jones, 1957, 182) not foreseeing the escalation of events yet to come.

“We live in an age that pays lip service to history, yet which continually undermines the ties we have to the past”, wrote Darian Leader (2013). This statement, which relates to manic depression and the healthcare system’s denial and attempted erasure of the meaning of personal history, can be given a wider reading in the context of the present investigation. Undermining history, memory and the ties with the past serves a totalising hegemonic purpose. Historical consciousness, on the other hand, can introduce alternative discourses that challenge the dominating voices of the ‘it’ and the ‘over-I’. The present, as well as hegemonic historical discourses can be put into question in the light of the past. Walter Benjamin calls for a questioning of the pillars of history and culture “for there is no testimony of culture that it is not also a testimony of barbarism”. By means of the figure of the “ragman” Benjamin highlights the importance and unsettling power of what mainstream discourses scorn. Benjamin calls for the historian to “brush history against the grain” (Benjamin, 1942, 433) as a way of countering the totalising historical discourse by re-introducing what hitherto had been excluded, perhaps feared and deemed abject.

Foucault’s thinking on ‘speaking truth to power’, or parrhesia, is relevant in this respect. It involves; “the risk of offending or provoking the other person; it is truth subject to risk of violence”. The truth spoken challenges the bond between the speaker and the addressee, at the risk of ending the relationship. Parrhesia means telling all, saying everything, without withholding or concealment. It can be understood in two senses, however, saying anything “that comes to mind, anything that serves the cause one is defending, anything that serves the passion or interest driving the person who is speaking” – or in a more positive sense, of “telling the truth without concealment, reserve, [or] empty manner of speech”. In the positive sense of the term the truth must be the personal opinion of the speaker – one personally signs the truth stated, binds oneself to it, and is thus bound to and by it ([1984]2011, 9-11).

We might ask how the practice of psychoanalysis, and free association, stand in relation to this, and about its political implications. With reference to the protected and confidential space of the clinical setting, Thompson writes; “Most of us either speak impulsively without awareness of what we say or think through everything we are about to disclose before speaking”. By contrast, “speaking unreservedly while remaining attentive to what is being disclosed” (2001, 75) appears radical, emphasising the significance of the promise to free associate, rather than the activity as such. In Freud’s words; “You must never give in to these criticisms” – which could be conceived of as related to the power of the analyst, figures from one’s past, socially more or less conscious restrictions combined with one’s own – “indeed, you must say it precisely because you feel an aversion to doing so. […] Finally, never forget that you have promised to be absolutely honest, and never leave anything out because, for some reason or other, it is unpleasant to tell it” (1913c, 135). What social or political conditions or frameworks are presupposed in or challenged by these ideas? We invite contributions on these and related questions.

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group analysts, literary theorists, historians and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. We promote discussion among the presenters and participants, for 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 to the whole symposium is encouraged and priority will be given to those who plan to do so. Due to the nature of the forum audio recording is not permitted.

Presentations are expected to take half an hour. Another 20 minutes is set aside for discussion. There is a 10 min break in between each paper. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words, attached in a word-document, to moc.liamgnull@scitilop.sisylanaohcysp by December 10^th 2013. We will respond by, and present a preliminary programme on December 20^th  2013. If you would like to sign up to participate without presenting a paper, please contact us after this date.

This is a relatively small symposium where active participation is encouraged and an enjoyable social atmosphere sought. A participation fee, which includes two shared dinners, of £150 (or € 178) before February 15^th 2014 – £180 (or € 214) after February 15^th 2014 is to be paid before the symposium. Fees must be covered by a bank transfer/international bank transfer. Your place is only confirmed once we have received your completed registration form as well as your payment. Additional information will be given after your abstract has been accepted or after the conference programme has been finalized.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance for this event, though we will be able to assist you in finding affordable accommodation after January 1^st 2014. Please contact us if you wish to make a donation towards the conference. We thank all donors in advance!

Note 1. The use of the terms ‘it’ and ‘over-I’ draws on Bettelheim’s critique of the standard English translation of Freud in Freud and Man’s Soul.

NON-EXCLUSIVE LIST OF RELEVANT LITERATURE:

Adorno, T.W/Frenkel-Brunswik, E./Levinson, D. J./Sanford, R. N. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality. N.Y: Harpers & Brothers.

Adorno, T. W. ([1959]1998)”The Meaning of Working Through the Past” in Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 89-103.

Arendt, H. ([1951]1976) The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego/N.Y./London: Harcourt Brace.

Auestad, L. ed. (2012) Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation. London: Karnac.

Auestad, L. ed. (2013) Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentricm and Xenophobia. London: Karnac.

Benjamin, W. (1943). “Sur le Concept d’Histoire” Œuvres III. Paris: Gallimard, 2000./ Benjamin, W. ([1943]1968) “Theses on the Philosophy of History” in W. Benjamin/H. Arendt ed. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.

Bettelheim, B. (1983) Freud and Man’s Soul. New York: Vintage.

Enyedi, Z./ Erós, F. (1999) eds. Authoritarianism and Prejudice: Central European Perspectives. Osiris Kiadó.

Ferenczi, S. (1933) “Confusion of Tongues between the Adult and the Child” in Final Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. London/New York: Karnac, 199, pp. 156-167.

Foucault, M ([1984]2011) The Courage of Truth. The Government of Self and Others II. Lectures at the Collège de France1983-1984. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Freud, S. (1913c) On Beginning the Treatment. SE, vol. 12.

Hall, S./Massey, D./Rustin, M. (2013) After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto, Soundings journal, available electronically: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/manifesto.html

Jones , E. (1957) The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 3 . New York: Basic Books

Klein, M. (1931). “A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition” Int. J. PsA., vol. 12, p. 206.

Leader, D. (2013) “What have I done?” in The Guardian, 27^th April.

Moïsi, D. (2010) The Geopolitics of Emotion. New York: Anchor Books.

Said, E. W. ([1978] 2003) Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.

Thompson, M. G. (2001) “The Ethic of Psychoanalysis. The Fundamental Rule to be Honest” in Where Id Was. Challenging Normalization in Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Continuum.

Todorov, T. (2011) The Totalitarian Experience. London/New York/Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Ås, B (2004). “The Five Master Suppression Techniques”. Women In White: The European Outlook. Stockholm: Stockholm City Council. pp. 78-83.