CRISES AND TRANSMISSION
A Psychoanalysis and Politics series of digital seminars
Wednesday evenings at 6 pm London time/ 7 pm Oslo and Berlin time/ 8 pm Cape Town and Jerusalem time/ 1 pm New York Time/ 12 noon Chicago time/
10 am Vancouver time via Zoom
Films based on the seminars will later be available for rental on Vimeo
Terms and conditions: Please register early. If you haven’t registered at least half an hour before the seminar starts, your participation cannot be guaranteed. Your ticket will only be refunded if the seminar is cancelled or postponed. If you have registered for a seminar and miss out for whatever reason, you can e-mail psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com and ask for a private copy of the talk minus the discussion, which will be ready a few days after the event. For those who haven’t registered for a seminar, the video will be available for rental after a few days, see Films.
This is an overview over the seminars where the speaker and the date is confirmed. Further details on each of these will follow, and more seminars will be added on. If you would like to be kept informed, you may complete the form on the contact page.
FORTHCOMING SPRING 2025
Jan. 22nd JAY FRANKEL – What the study of nonhuman animals reveals about authoritarianism and its alternative To register and for more information Jay Frankel, Ph.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City. He is also an associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society. He is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Consultant, in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, at New York University. He has written on topics including trauma, identification with the aggressor, authoritarianism, the analytic relationship, the work of Sándor Ferenczi, play, child psychotherapy, and relational psychoanalysis.
Feb. 19th JONATHAN SKLAR – Dresden – The Ghosts of the Past are returning to haunt Europe To register and for more information Jonathan Sklar is a Training Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society, an honorary member of the South African and Serbian psychoanalytic societies and Founder of the Independent Psychoanalysis Trust. He is the author of Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis (Karnac 2011), Balint Matters: Psychosomatics and the Art of Assessment (Karnac 2017), Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix 2019), and The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play (Karnac 2024).
March 5th JILL GENTILE – Hate Speech as the action of inequality To register and for more information Jill Gentile, PhD, is faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and also sits on several other editorial boards. She was awarded the 2017 Gradiva Award for her essay, “What is Special about Speech?” Her book Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with Michael Macrone (Karnac, 2016) explores psychoanalysis as a praxis of emancipatory democracy through the lenses of freedom of speech and the feminine.
April 9th BARNABY BARRATT – On Psychoanalytic Evangelism in Non-European Cultures: Assessing the Export of Psychoanalytic Theorizing as a Neo-colonialist Enterprise? To register and for more information Barnaby B. Barratt a training analyst in the South African Psychoanalytic Association and a supervising analyst in the Indian Psychoanalytic Society. He is a full clinical member of both the International Psychoanalytical Association and the European Association for Body Psychotherapy. He is the author of the trilogy “Rediscovering Psychoanalysis”; What is Psychoanalysis? 100 Years after the ‘Secret Committee, Radical Psychoanalysis: An Essay on Free-associative Praxis, and Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst, all published by Routledge.
April 23rd MICHAEL O’LOUGHLIN – Troubling democracy and decolonization: The role of a critical psychoanalysis in cultivating a revolting unconscious To register and for more information Michael O’Loughlin is Professor in the College of Education and Health Sciences and in the Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University, New York. He has authored, edited or co-edited many books, including, most recently, Precarities of 21st century childhoods: Critical explorations of time(s), place(s), and identities (2023). Since 2018 he has been coeditor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He is also editor of the book series, Psychoanalytic Interventions: Clinical Social, and Cultural Contexts, and co-editor of the book series Critical Childhood & Youth Studies: Theoretical Explorations and Practices in Clinical, Educational, Social, and Cultural Contexts. He directs the Adelphi Asylum Project and he has a private practice for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis on Long Island, NY.
May 21st RENÉE DANZIGER – Reflections on the American Dream To register and for more information Renée Danziger is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She has a DPhil in Politics and for a number of years worked at the World Health Organisation and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on HIV/AIDS policy. She is particularly interested in the application of psychoanalytic thought to social and political issues. Her most recent book is Radical Revenge: Shame, Blame and the Urge for Retaliation, and she is currently working on a book about the American Dream.
June 18th ERAN ROLNIK – Political Caesura and the analyst’s freedom of thought
SPRING 2024
Jan. 18th LENE AUESTAD – Between Animal and Machine: Identifications and Revolts, Revolting Identifications (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy from The Ethics Programme, University of Oslo, the Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. She is the author of Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination, Karnac/ Routledge, 2015, and a number of other publications. She writes and lectures internationally on ethics, critical theory and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on prejudice, racism, discrimination, trauma and nationalism.) NB: This seminar is on a Thursday More information
AUTUMN 2023
Sept. 14th JONATHAN SKLAR – Stranger, Visitor, Metaphor (Jonathan Sklar is a Training Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society, an honorary member of the South African and Serbian psychoanalytic societies and Founder of the Independent Psychoanalysis Trust. He is the author of Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis (Karnac 2011), Balint Matters: Psychosomatics and the Art of Assessment (Karnac 2017), and Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix 2019). NB: This seminar is on a Thursday More information
Oct. 4th CAT MOIR WOLFE – The Social Envelope: On the psychodynamics of class, mobility, and exclusion (Cat Moir Wolfe is a critical theorist and former academic, currently retraining to become a psychoanalytically oriented clinical psychologist at the University of Toulouse, Jean-Jaurès, France.) More information
Oct. 18th CAROLINE ROONEY – The Revolution is a Woman: From Woke Culture to the Arab Awakening (Caroline Rooney is a Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies, School of English, University Of Kent, UK. Her work engages with anti-colonial liberation movements in Africa and the Middle East, and her most recent book is Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left After the Uprisings (I.B.Tauris, 2020). Her other books include African Literature, Animism and Politics (Routledge 2000) and Decolonising Gender: Literature and a Poetics of the Real (2007).) More information
Nov. 8th LOUIS ROTHSCHILD – Taking a knife to the hegemon: Psychoanalytic implications for a Dionysian father (Louis Rothschild, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Baltimore County, Maryland. His publications have ranged from quantitative to qualitative, social-cognitive to psychoanalysis, and clinical to philosophical. Most recently, he completed his first book, Rapprochement between fathers and sons: Breakdowns, reunions, potentialities with Phoenix Publishing House. Additionally, he co-edited and contributed a chapter to Precarities of 21st century childhoods: Critical explorations of time(s), place(s), and identities, and also penned the epilogue for the edited book Truth: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms. Outside of his professional life, Louis has a fondness for tennis, triathlon, and chasing a rather elusive sourdough starter in the kitchen.) More information
SUMMER 2023
June 28th LENE AUESTAD – Affects, Groups, and Illusions: Freud’s Group Psychology essay as foreshadowing fascism (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy from The Ethics Programme, University of Oslo, the Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. She is the author of Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination, Karnac/ Routledge, 2015, and a number of other publications. She writes and lectures internationally on ethics, critical theory and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on prejudice, racism, discrimination, trauma and nationalism.) More information
July 19th NAZAN ÜSTÜNDAĞ – The Obsession of the Turkish State with Kurds: You Belong To Me or the Black Earth (Nazan Üstündağ received her Ph.D. in 2005 from the sociology department at Indiana University Bloomington. Between 2005 and 2018 she worked as an Assistant Professor at Boğaziçi University, Department of Sociology. Between 2018 and 2020 she was affiliated with the Transregionale Studien in Berlin as an Academy in Exile and IIE-Scholar Rescue Fund fellow. Between 2020 and 2023 she received a fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation Patrimonies program. Nazan Üstündağ’s work concerns feminist political theory, political imaginaries, gendered subjectivities and state violence in Kurdistan. Her first book with the title Mother, Politician and Guerilla: Political Imagination in the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement will be published in September 2023 by Fordham University Press.) More information
SPRING 2023
Jan. 18th MICHAEL O’LOUGHLIN – The Reduction of Children to “Bare Life”. The Case of Child Migration. (Michael O’Loughlin is a college professor and researcher at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York, USA. He is also a licensed psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Hyde Park, New York. He has a practice serving children from age 2 upwards, as well as adolescents and adults.) More information
Feb. 8th FADI ABOU-RIHAN – On Play’s Cruelty: Between Playpen and Detention Centre. (Fadi Abou-Rihan is a Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst based in Toronto, and a Dr. of Philosophy. His forthcoming book, Finding Winnicott: Philosophical Encounters with the Psychoanalytic, will be published by Routledge in March 2023.) More information
March 1st KATHLEEN KELLEY-LAINÉ – Psychoanalysis as a Space to Grow (Kathleen Kelley-Lainé is a trilingual psychoanalyst working in private practice (English, French and Hungarian). She is an active member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, the European Psychoanalytical Federation, the International Psychoanalytical Association, and the International Sándor Ferenczi Society. She is internationally known for her many conferences, published articles in psychoanalytical journals, and books.) More information
March 22nd LINDEN WEST – Politics and Psychoanalysis: A troubling relationship (Dr. Linden West is Professor Emeritus of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. He is a celebrated author and researcher in the field of lifelong learning, adult and higher education. He is also a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.) More information
May 10th MICHAEL O’LOUGHLIN – Cultural ruptures and their consequences for mental health across generations: The case of Ireland’s Great Hunger (Michael O’Loughlin is a college professor and researcher at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York, USA. He is also a licensed psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Hyde Park, New York. He has a practice serving children from age 2 upwards, as well as adolescents and adults.) More information
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AUTUMN 2022
Oct. 12th LENE AUESTAD – Sexual Counter-Revolution: Sexism, Homophobia and the New Right (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy from The Ethics Programme, University of Oslo, the Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. She is the author of Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination, Karnac/ Routledge, 2015, and a number of other publications. She writes and lectures internationally on ethics, critical theory and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on prejudice, racism, discrimination, trauma and nationalism.) More information
Nov. 16th RENÉE DANZIGER – Reflections on the Roots of Misogyny (Renée Danziger is a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytic Society and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. She is a training analyst for the Independent Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training (IPCAPA) and for the Tavistock Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training. She is a social scientist by background and holds a D.Phil in Politics. She recently published the book Radical Revenge: Shame, Blame and the Urge for Retaliation, Free Association Books, 2020.) More information
SUMMER 2022
June 15th – Thinking about the future. This seminar is free to participants and is open to previous participants in Psychoanalysis and Politics and to people who would like to continue to be part of this community of thought. For inquiries, e-mail: psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com
June 22nd JAY FRANKEL – Traumatic aloneness in children with narcissistically preoccupied parents (Jay Frankel, Ph.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City. He is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Consultant, in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, at New York University; Faculty in the Trauma Studies Program, at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, in New York. He has written on trauma, identification with the aggressor, authoritarianism, the analytic relationship, the work of Sándor Ferenczi, play, child psychotherapy, and relational psychoanalysis.) More information
July 6th ENDRE KORITAR – The Leader’s Hypnotic Influence and the Creation of Alternate Reality (Endre Koritar is a Training and Supervising analyst in the Western branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. He is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis and has been guest editor of several special editions with important papers from the International Ferenczi conferences in Toronto and Florence.) More information
July 13th RENÉE DANZIGER – Fascism, Populism, and The Big Lie (Renée Danziger is a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytic Society and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. She is a training analyst for the Independent Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training (IPCAPA) and for the Tavistock Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training. She is a social scientist by background and holds a D.Phil in Politics. She recently published the book Radical Revenge: Shame, Blame and the Urge for Retaliation, Free Association Books, 2020.) More information
SPRING 2022
Jan. 5th SVERRE VARVIN – Do we need to rethink traumatization? Traumatization in political, social, and cultural contexts (Sverre Varvin is a training analyst in the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society and professor emeritus at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has extensive experience in research and clinical work with severely traumatised people. He is chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) China Committee.) More information
Jan. 19th ENDRE KORITAR – The Unwelcome Child as a Dynamic Construct of the Terrorist Mind (Endre Koritar is a Training and Supervising analyst in the Western branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. He is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis and has been guest editor of several special editions with important papers from the International Ferenczi conferences in Toronto and Florence.) More information
Feb. 16th SALLY WEINTROBE – The climate bubble (Sally Weintrobe is a psychoanalyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She chairs the International Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on Climate Change. She has recently published the book Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare, Bloomsbury, 2021.) More information
March 9th JOHN ADLAM and CHRISTOPHER SCANLON – The Diogenes Paradigm: Un-housed minds and inhospitable environments (John Adlam is a group psychotherapist and independent researcher, working mainly in the National Health Service, UK. He is a founder member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and a former Vice President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. Christopher Scanlon is a psycho-social consultant/researcher and consultant psychotherapist in forensic and adult mental health. He is a training group analyst and the Institute of Group Analysis and the Irish Group Analytic Society, and founder member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies.) More information
AUTUMN 2021
Oct. 27th LENE AUESTAD – To think or not to think: A phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspective on experience, thinking, and creativity (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy from The Ethics Programme, University of Oslo, the Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society.) More information
Nov. 10th IAN PARKER – Lacanian and Marxist reflections on Psychoanalysis and Revolution (Ian Parker is a revolutionary Marxist and practising psychoanalyst in Manchester, UK) More information
Nov. 24th JILL GENTILE in dialogue with BARNABY BARRATT – Freedom of speech and Free Association/ Why decolonization and freedom of speech needs feminine law (Jill Gentile, Ph.D. is faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her book Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with Michael Macrone (Karnac, 2016) explores the mutual resonances between psychoanalysis and democracy through the lenses of freedom of speech and the feminine.) More information
Dec. 1st JONATHAN SKLAR – Francis Bacon and the Radicality of Free Association (Jonathan Sklar is a Training Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society, an honorary member of the South African and Serbian psychoanalytic societies and Founder of the Independent Psychoanalysis Trust. He is the author of Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis (Karnac 2011), Balint Matters: Psychosomatics and the Art of Assessment (Karnac 2017), and Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix 2019).
More information
SPRING 2021
Jan. 20th SAMIR GANDESHA – Scenes from a Traumatic History of Political Theory (Samir Gandesha is Director, Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.) More information
Feb. 17th LENE AUESTAD – A Norwegian massacre and the spread of far right ideology – ten years on (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy from The Ethics Programme, University of Oslo, the Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics and an Associate member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society.) More information
March 17th ZELJKA MATIJASEVIC – Split Worlds, Split Minds: Ideological and Political Borderlands (Zeljka Matijasevic is a Professor of Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.) More information
April 14th ANGELA MAUSS-HANKE – “You feel it, but you don’t want to believe it”: Traces of National Socialism in Germans of the 21st century (Angela Mauss-Hanke is a Training analyst, German Psychoanalytical Association, DPV and groups, D3G, and Lecturer at the Academy for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Munich.) More information
May 12th RENÉE DANZIGER – What’s Wrong With Revenge? (Renée Danziger is a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytic Society and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. She is a training analyst for the Independent Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training (IPCAPA) and for the Tavistock Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training. She is a social scientist by background and holds a D.Phil in Politics.) More information
June 2nd JILL GENTILE – Death v. Life: The Strange Temporalities and Radical Democratic Imaginaries of a Pandemic (Jill Gentile, Ph.D. is faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her book Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with Michael Macrone (Karnac, 2016) explores the mutual resonances between psychoanalysis and democracy through the lenses of freedom of speech and the feminine.) More information
June 16th ARNE JOHAN VETLESEN – The use of an Object – What kinds of objects are useful? (Arne Johan Vetlesen is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo and the author of twenty-five books, including Evil and Human Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2005), The Denial of Nature (Routledge, 2015), and Cosmologies of the Anthropocene: Panpsychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism (Routledge, 2019.) More information
June 30th SIRI GULLESTAD – Ideological destructiveness: A psychoanalytic perspective on the massacre of July 22, 2011 (Siri Gullestad is a Training analyst, Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society and Professor emeritus of psychology, University of Oslo.) More information
AUTUMN 2020
Sept. 23rd General discussion around the two brief texts Statement of support for Black Lives Matter and Psychoanalysis and Participatory Democracy. With up to 25 participants. This first seminar is free to participants and is open only to regular participants in Psychoanalysis and Politics conferences. For inquiries, e-mail: psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com
Oct. 7th JONATHAN SKLAR – The Nazification of Psychoanalysis: Velasquez and the Transmission of Power (Jonathan Sklar is a Training Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society.) More information
Nov. 4th LENE AUESTAD – The Political Engagement of Psychoanalysis: Nic Waal and the Edith Jacobson case (Lene Auestad is a Dr. of Philosophy, an Author and Founder of Psychoanalysis and Politics.) More information
Dec. 2nd FADI ABOU-RIHAN – Civilization and Barbarism: Winnicottian Reflections on the Psycho-Political (Fadi Abou-Rihan is a Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst based in Toronto, and a Dr. of Philosophy.) More information
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Image: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (about 1826) Oedipus and the Sphinx, National Gallery, London.