SAFPAC Conference and Seminars 2023-2024
All events will take place on Zoom. A Zoom link will be provided upon booking.
The following are open to all. Please distribute to anyone you think would be interested.
For further information, contact Prof Del Loewenthal:
[email protected]
Saturday 30th September 2023 | 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
Joint CPN & SAFPAC Conference:
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid: What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Speakers include: Aaron Balick, Adele Greaves, Del Loewenthal, Deborah Madden, Helen Molden, Daniel Rubenstein, Geraldine Sheedy, Gail Simon, Ronen Stilman, Patrica Talens and Ian Tucker
Click here for more information and booking
Thursday 2nd November 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Diahermeneutic delight: the heart of Daseinsanalysis
Anthony Stadlen
Click here to book
Saturday 4th November 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
To change our thinking: Philosophical practice for difficult times
Helen Douglas
Click here to book
Thursday 7th December 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The skull beneath the skin: death, suicide and existential therapy
Dr Manu Bazzano
Click here to book
Thursday 8th February 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Authenticity with Heidegger and Freud
Jake Osborne
Click here to book
Saturday 24th February 2024 | 10:00 am - 11:30 am
What is it like to be a person with BPD? Lived experience at the intersection of psychoanalysis and phenomenology in the clinic
Prof Alessandra D’Agostino
Click here to book
Thursday 7th March 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The Possibility of Existential Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
Dr Julia Cayne
Click here to book
Thursday 9th May 2024 | 6:00pm – 6:30 pm
Psychoanalysis and the Postmaternal
Joanna Kellond
Click here to book
Saturday 11th May 2024 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Bipedality, Premature Birth and Desire
Prof Charlie Gere
Click here to book
Thursday 6th June 2024
Anouchka Grose
The Birth of Ecopsychology
Click here to book
Further information:
Saturday 30th September 2023 | 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
Joint CPN & SAFPAC Conference:
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid: What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Speakers include: Aaron Balick, Adele Greaves, Del Loewenthal, Deborah Madden, Helen Molden, Daniel Rubenstein, Geraldine Sheedy, Gail Simon, Ronen Stilman, Patrica Talens and Ian Tucker
Click here for more information and booking
Thursday 2nd November 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Diahermeneutic delight: the heart of Daseinsanalysis
Anthony Stadlen
Click here to book
Some Daseinsanalysts speak as if they have unmediated access to phenomena, which it is their task to teach to the client. Heidegger denounced "dialectic", from his early lectures of 1919 to his final seminar of 1973. Yet he described "phenomenology" in Being and Time (1927) as logos (discourse, conversation), in the middle voice, revealing phenomena. And in 1919 he said, once, that philosophical dialectic is "diahermeneutics", a term he never used again. Can Daseinsanalysis be renewed as Diahermeneutics, the stone the builders forgot?
Anthony Stadlen is a Daseinsanalyst, Independent Effective Member (UK) of the International Federation of Daseinsanalysis; convenor of Inner Circle Seminars; historical researcher on paradigm cases of psychotherapy; former Research Fellow, Freud Museum, London; recipient of Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Services to the Cause of Civil Liberties.
Saturday 4th November 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
To change our thinking: Philosophical practice for difficult times
Helen Douglas
Click here to book
This talk describes the development of Douglas' philosophical counselling practice as a practice of emancipation in concert with the writings of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Rancière. It considers the significance of personal engagement and companionship for the cultivation of a well-lived life and suggests that the intransigence of our global crises indicates an incorrect view of human nature and an ossified or unbalanced relationship between practical and theoretical ways of knowing and wisdom. As this was originally written for an academic philosophy audience, she is delighted to bring it to the SAFPAC community. To encourage a rich discussion, the paper is available here for prereading. You might also want to view the three videos on her website here.
Helen Douglas is a counselling philosopher in Cape Town, South Africa. She came to both aspects from her experience in the anti-apartheid movement in the late 1980s. Her philosophical work is largely informed by the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the approaches of scepticism and phenomenology; her therapeutic lineage goes back to RD Laing through a long apprenticeship with Laing’s colleague, the Hungarian-Canadian psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár. Helen is the author of Love & Arms: Violence and Justification After Levinas (Pittsburgh: Trivium, 2011). In 2021, she gave a keynote address to the North American Levinas Society’s conference on Solidarity and Community. Her website, with videos and other publications, can be found at https://philosophy-practice.co.za/.
Thursday 7th December 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The skull beneath the skin: death, suicide and existential therapy
Dr Manu Bazzano
Click here to book
Drawing on notions such as being-towards-death (Heidegger) and staring at the sun (Yalom), traditional existential therapy replicates the failings of conventional psychology: it turns death into an experience to be apprehended and managed. But death remains “unappeasable and implacable” (Levinas). Closely linked to the desire to apprehend death are the fearful ways in which conventional therapy deals with suicide and so-called suicidal ideation. I will explore whether there may be other ways of confronting death and to deal with the likelihood of suicide.
Dr Manu Bazzano is a writer, psychotherapist/supervisor in private practice, and independent researcher. Among his books: Subversion and Desire: Pathways to Transindividuation (2023) Nietzsche and Psychotherapy (2019); Re-visioning Existential Therapy: Counter-traditional Perspectives (Ed, 2020); Re-visioning Person-centred Therapy: Theory and Practice of a Radical Paradigm (Ed, 2018); Zen and Therapy: Heretical Perspectives (2017); Therapy and the Counter-tradition (co-edited with Julie Webb, 2016); After Mindfulness (Ed, 2014); Spectre of the Stranger (2012); The Speed of Angels (2013); Buddha is Dead: Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen (2006); Haiku For Lovers (2003); Zen Poems (2002). He studied Eastern contemplative practices since 1980 and in 2004 was ordained in the Soto and Rinzai traditions of Zen Buddhism. He has been co-editor of PCEP Journal and is associate editor of Self & Society, Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Website: manubazzano.com
Thursday 8th February 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Authenticity with Heidegger and Freud
Jake Osborne
Click here to book
This seminar will look at Heidegger's understanding of authenticity in Being and Time, putting it in cultural context and contrasting it with contemporary views. We will then go on to discuss how this might help us relate to the Freudian unconscious.
Jake Osborne trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the Philadelphia Association, going to work for many years as a house therapist in one of their therapeutic communities as well as working with the homeless for St Mungo's. I now work for the NHS in Oxford.
Saturday 24th February 2024 | 10:00 am - 11:30 am
What is it like to be a person with BPD? Lived experience at the intersection of psychoanalysis and phenomenology in the clinic
Prof Alessandra D’Agostino
Click here to book
As Bollas points out, the constitution of a new common field of clinical intervention, consisting mainly of the borderline area, has forced many psychoanalysts to abandon interpretations based on the idea of an explanatory ‘unmasking’ (more appropriate to the traditional treatment of neurotic patients) and to become aware of the fundamental role of paying attention to the level of the patient’s immediate subjective experience in order to meet them where they are. The ‘phenomenological temptation’ in psychoanalysis, which André Green viewed with suspicion and saw as a trap, seems today to have become one of the paths that allow further ‘extensions’ of psychoanalysis. The aim of the presentation is to discuss the main theoretical-clinical areas that characterize contemporary psychoanalysis in which phenomenology can claim a legitimate (or, for some, illegitimate) position and the implications of this shift at the level of psychoanalytic technique and practice. Finally, a clinical case is presented.
Alessandra D’Agostino, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo (Italy), where she teaches Personality and Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology (BA in Psychological Sciences and Techniques) and Clinical Psychopathology (MA in Clinical Psychology). She is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI-IPA). She has completed postgraduate training in England (Anna Freud Center, London) and the United States (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA). She is a member of the College of Professors and Researchers of Clinical Psychology of Italian Universities, an ordinary member of the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP, Section of Clinical and Dynamic Psychology), and a member of the European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD). Author of numerous publications in psychopathology and clinical areas, she serves as a reviewer for several national and international scientific journals in the field, including the Journal of Personality Disorders (Guilford) and Psychopathology (Karger). Her research interests include severe personality disorders/borderline (psychopathology and assessment), self-harm and suicide (psychopathology and assessment).
Thursday 7th March 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The Possibility of Existential Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
Dr Julia Cayne
Click here to book
This seminar raises a question of the possibility of practising as a psychotherapist drawing on both existential phenomenology, (with reference mainly to Kierkegaard and Boss) and psychoanalysis (with reference mainly to Freud and Lacan). In comparing: the epistemological basis of each ie the philosophical approach of existential phenomenology (here considered through the stories we tell) with the logical positivism of psychoanalysis, (as abstraction/theorising); their methodological approaches; and, some case vignettes, points of divergence and convergence will be considered.
Dr Julia Cayne is an Existential-Analytic Psychotherapist, Chair of training with the Southern Association For Psychotherapy and Counselling and working in private practice in South West Wiltshire. Her interests include questions around the nature of knowledge and what kinds of knowing and unknowing best serve psychotherapeutic practice and research and in particular what phenomenology can teach us about how we learn from experience.
Thursday 9th May 2024 | 6:00pm – 7:30 pm
Psychoanalysis and the Postmaternal
Joanna Kellond
Click here to book
In her book of 2011, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, Julie Stephens suggests that contemporary societies in the global north are decidedly ‘postmaternal.’ By this she means that they are characterised by a “widespread cultural unease, if not hostility, towards certain expressions of the maternal and maternalist political perspectives in general” (2011, ix). This talk will unpack various understandings of the term ‘postmaternal,’ both positive and negative, and consider the contribution that psychoanalytic accounts of subjective development can make to theorising the postmaternal as a utopian horizon, where practices of mothering circulate beyond, and contrary to, the nuclear family.
Joanna Kellond is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Brighton, where she leads the BA (Hons) Politics, Sexuality and Gender. She is also a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Association. Her scholarly work is located at the intersection between psychoanalytic theory and practice and socialist-feminism. Her monograph, Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care, was published in the Palgrave Macmillan series, Studies in the Psychosocial, in 2022.
Saturday 11th May 2024 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Bipedality, Premature Birth and Desire
Prof Charlie Gere
Click here to book
Gere's starting point is how the work of Jacques Derrida and those he influenced allow us to consider the relation between the human and the technical. One of the most important ideas emerging out of Derrida’s development of grammatology is Bernard Stiegler’s ‘originary technicity’, which was also greatly influenced by palaeoanthropologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan’s ideas about the relation between human bipedality and technicity. Following Leroi-Gourhan Stiegler proposed that technics invents the human rather than the other way round, or that the human and the technical co-evolve. Stiegler never properly engaged with psychoanalysis, other than a late engagement with Winnicott and the Transitional Object. The work of Jacques Lacan is largely missing from Stiegler’s thought, a lacuna Gere wishes to address by way of a consideration of the relation between bipedality and the necessity for premature birth in humans. For Lacan the latter is crucial in the emergence of the symbolic order. As Lorenzo Chiesa puts it ‘Lacan postulates a primordial biological discord between man and his environment, centred on premature birth and a subsequent disorder of the imagination, from which language and the Symbolic arise immanently’. He suggests that, for Lacan, ‘the human being is born with foetalised traits, that is to say deriving from premature birth’. Henry Sullivan invokes Lacan to ask whether ‘the most elementary stone tools to be regarded as indications of human desire’. Here there might seem to be a possible connection between the work of Lacan and that of Stiegler, and a single sentence in the first volume of his magnum opus Technics and Time offers a potential Lacanian slant to Stiegler’s thought. He writes that ‘Flint is the first reflective memory, the first mirror’. Thus, following Lacan and Sullivan, perhaps the earliest flint tools and all our tools since, up to the Metaverse, are objets petit a, and that the specific human relation to technicity is one of lack and desire.
Charlie Gere is professor of media theory and history at the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, and the author of a number of books, most recently Unnatural Theology: Religion, Art and Media after the Death of God (2019), I Hate the Lake District (2020) and World’s End (2022).
Thursday 6th June 2024 | 6:00 - 7:30 pm
The Birth of Ecopsychology
Anouchka Grose
Click here to book
This talk will focus on the work of Theodore Roszak, who coined the term ‘ecopsychology’ in the early nineties. With hindsight, his ideas seem extraordinary prescient and useful for thinking about how to respond to climate-related distress.
Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of CFAR and The College of Psychoanalysts-UK. She has written non-fiction: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), as well as writing fiction: Ringing for You (Harper Collins, 1999) and Darling Daisy (Harper Collins, 2000). She is the editor of Hysteria Today (2015), a collection of essays on hysteria in the contemporary psychoanalytic clinic. Her journalism is published in The Guardian, and she also writes for numerous art and fashion publications. She has taught at Camberwell School of Art and gives talks on art and psychoanalysis in museums and galleries, as well as sometimes speaking on the radio.
The following are open to all. Please distribute to anyone you think would be interested.
For further information, contact Prof Del Loewenthal:
[email protected]
Saturday 30th September 2023 | 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
Joint CPN & SAFPAC Conference:
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid: What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Speakers include: Aaron Balick, Adele Greaves, Del Loewenthal, Deborah Madden, Helen Molden, Daniel Rubenstein, Geraldine Sheedy, Gail Simon, Ronen Stilman, Patrica Talens and Ian Tucker
Click here for more information and booking
Thursday 2nd November 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Diahermeneutic delight: the heart of Daseinsanalysis
Anthony Stadlen
Click here to book
Saturday 4th November 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
To change our thinking: Philosophical practice for difficult times
Helen Douglas
Click here to book
Thursday 7th December 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The skull beneath the skin: death, suicide and existential therapy
Dr Manu Bazzano
Click here to book
Thursday 8th February 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Authenticity with Heidegger and Freud
Jake Osborne
Click here to book
Saturday 24th February 2024 | 10:00 am - 11:30 am
What is it like to be a person with BPD? Lived experience at the intersection of psychoanalysis and phenomenology in the clinic
Prof Alessandra D’Agostino
Click here to book
Thursday 7th March 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The Possibility of Existential Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
Dr Julia Cayne
Click here to book
Thursday 9th May 2024 | 6:00pm – 6:30 pm
Psychoanalysis and the Postmaternal
Joanna Kellond
Click here to book
Saturday 11th May 2024 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Bipedality, Premature Birth and Desire
Prof Charlie Gere
Click here to book
Thursday 6th June 2024
Anouchka Grose
The Birth of Ecopsychology
Click here to book
Further information:
Saturday 30th September 2023 | 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
Joint CPN & SAFPAC Conference:
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid: What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Speakers include: Aaron Balick, Adele Greaves, Del Loewenthal, Deborah Madden, Helen Molden, Daniel Rubenstein, Geraldine Sheedy, Gail Simon, Ronen Stilman, Patrica Talens and Ian Tucker
Click here for more information and booking
Thursday 2nd November 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Diahermeneutic delight: the heart of Daseinsanalysis
Anthony Stadlen
Click here to book
Some Daseinsanalysts speak as if they have unmediated access to phenomena, which it is their task to teach to the client. Heidegger denounced "dialectic", from his early lectures of 1919 to his final seminar of 1973. Yet he described "phenomenology" in Being and Time (1927) as logos (discourse, conversation), in the middle voice, revealing phenomena. And in 1919 he said, once, that philosophical dialectic is "diahermeneutics", a term he never used again. Can Daseinsanalysis be renewed as Diahermeneutics, the stone the builders forgot?
Anthony Stadlen is a Daseinsanalyst, Independent Effective Member (UK) of the International Federation of Daseinsanalysis; convenor of Inner Circle Seminars; historical researcher on paradigm cases of psychotherapy; former Research Fellow, Freud Museum, London; recipient of Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Services to the Cause of Civil Liberties.
Saturday 4th November 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
To change our thinking: Philosophical practice for difficult times
Helen Douglas
Click here to book
This talk describes the development of Douglas' philosophical counselling practice as a practice of emancipation in concert with the writings of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Rancière. It considers the significance of personal engagement and companionship for the cultivation of a well-lived life and suggests that the intransigence of our global crises indicates an incorrect view of human nature and an ossified or unbalanced relationship between practical and theoretical ways of knowing and wisdom. As this was originally written for an academic philosophy audience, she is delighted to bring it to the SAFPAC community. To encourage a rich discussion, the paper is available here for prereading. You might also want to view the three videos on her website here.
Helen Douglas is a counselling philosopher in Cape Town, South Africa. She came to both aspects from her experience in the anti-apartheid movement in the late 1980s. Her philosophical work is largely informed by the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the approaches of scepticism and phenomenology; her therapeutic lineage goes back to RD Laing through a long apprenticeship with Laing’s colleague, the Hungarian-Canadian psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár. Helen is the author of Love & Arms: Violence and Justification After Levinas (Pittsburgh: Trivium, 2011). In 2021, she gave a keynote address to the North American Levinas Society’s conference on Solidarity and Community. Her website, with videos and other publications, can be found at https://philosophy-practice.co.za/.
Thursday 7th December 2023 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The skull beneath the skin: death, suicide and existential therapy
Dr Manu Bazzano
Click here to book
Drawing on notions such as being-towards-death (Heidegger) and staring at the sun (Yalom), traditional existential therapy replicates the failings of conventional psychology: it turns death into an experience to be apprehended and managed. But death remains “unappeasable and implacable” (Levinas). Closely linked to the desire to apprehend death are the fearful ways in which conventional therapy deals with suicide and so-called suicidal ideation. I will explore whether there may be other ways of confronting death and to deal with the likelihood of suicide.
Dr Manu Bazzano is a writer, psychotherapist/supervisor in private practice, and independent researcher. Among his books: Subversion and Desire: Pathways to Transindividuation (2023) Nietzsche and Psychotherapy (2019); Re-visioning Existential Therapy: Counter-traditional Perspectives (Ed, 2020); Re-visioning Person-centred Therapy: Theory and Practice of a Radical Paradigm (Ed, 2018); Zen and Therapy: Heretical Perspectives (2017); Therapy and the Counter-tradition (co-edited with Julie Webb, 2016); After Mindfulness (Ed, 2014); Spectre of the Stranger (2012); The Speed of Angels (2013); Buddha is Dead: Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen (2006); Haiku For Lovers (2003); Zen Poems (2002). He studied Eastern contemplative practices since 1980 and in 2004 was ordained in the Soto and Rinzai traditions of Zen Buddhism. He has been co-editor of PCEP Journal and is associate editor of Self & Society, Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Website: manubazzano.com
Thursday 8th February 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Authenticity with Heidegger and Freud
Jake Osborne
Click here to book
This seminar will look at Heidegger's understanding of authenticity in Being and Time, putting it in cultural context and contrasting it with contemporary views. We will then go on to discuss how this might help us relate to the Freudian unconscious.
Jake Osborne trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the Philadelphia Association, going to work for many years as a house therapist in one of their therapeutic communities as well as working with the homeless for St Mungo's. I now work for the NHS in Oxford.
Saturday 24th February 2024 | 10:00 am - 11:30 am
What is it like to be a person with BPD? Lived experience at the intersection of psychoanalysis and phenomenology in the clinic
Prof Alessandra D’Agostino
Click here to book
As Bollas points out, the constitution of a new common field of clinical intervention, consisting mainly of the borderline area, has forced many psychoanalysts to abandon interpretations based on the idea of an explanatory ‘unmasking’ (more appropriate to the traditional treatment of neurotic patients) and to become aware of the fundamental role of paying attention to the level of the patient’s immediate subjective experience in order to meet them where they are. The ‘phenomenological temptation’ in psychoanalysis, which André Green viewed with suspicion and saw as a trap, seems today to have become one of the paths that allow further ‘extensions’ of psychoanalysis. The aim of the presentation is to discuss the main theoretical-clinical areas that characterize contemporary psychoanalysis in which phenomenology can claim a legitimate (or, for some, illegitimate) position and the implications of this shift at the level of psychoanalytic technique and practice. Finally, a clinical case is presented.
Alessandra D’Agostino, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo (Italy), where she teaches Personality and Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology (BA in Psychological Sciences and Techniques) and Clinical Psychopathology (MA in Clinical Psychology). She is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI-IPA). She has completed postgraduate training in England (Anna Freud Center, London) and the United States (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA). She is a member of the College of Professors and Researchers of Clinical Psychology of Italian Universities, an ordinary member of the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP, Section of Clinical and Dynamic Psychology), and a member of the European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD). Author of numerous publications in psychopathology and clinical areas, she serves as a reviewer for several national and international scientific journals in the field, including the Journal of Personality Disorders (Guilford) and Psychopathology (Karger). Her research interests include severe personality disorders/borderline (psychopathology and assessment), self-harm and suicide (psychopathology and assessment).
Thursday 7th March 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The Possibility of Existential Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
Dr Julia Cayne
Click here to book
This seminar raises a question of the possibility of practising as a psychotherapist drawing on both existential phenomenology, (with reference mainly to Kierkegaard and Boss) and psychoanalysis (with reference mainly to Freud and Lacan). In comparing: the epistemological basis of each ie the philosophical approach of existential phenomenology (here considered through the stories we tell) with the logical positivism of psychoanalysis, (as abstraction/theorising); their methodological approaches; and, some case vignettes, points of divergence and convergence will be considered.
Dr Julia Cayne is an Existential-Analytic Psychotherapist, Chair of training with the Southern Association For Psychotherapy and Counselling and working in private practice in South West Wiltshire. Her interests include questions around the nature of knowledge and what kinds of knowing and unknowing best serve psychotherapeutic practice and research and in particular what phenomenology can teach us about how we learn from experience.
Thursday 9th May 2024 | 6:00pm – 7:30 pm
Psychoanalysis and the Postmaternal
Joanna Kellond
Click here to book
In her book of 2011, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, Julie Stephens suggests that contemporary societies in the global north are decidedly ‘postmaternal.’ By this she means that they are characterised by a “widespread cultural unease, if not hostility, towards certain expressions of the maternal and maternalist political perspectives in general” (2011, ix). This talk will unpack various understandings of the term ‘postmaternal,’ both positive and negative, and consider the contribution that psychoanalytic accounts of subjective development can make to theorising the postmaternal as a utopian horizon, where practices of mothering circulate beyond, and contrary to, the nuclear family.
Joanna Kellond is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Brighton, where she leads the BA (Hons) Politics, Sexuality and Gender. She is also a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Association. Her scholarly work is located at the intersection between psychoanalytic theory and practice and socialist-feminism. Her monograph, Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care, was published in the Palgrave Macmillan series, Studies in the Psychosocial, in 2022.
Saturday 11th May 2024 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Bipedality, Premature Birth and Desire
Prof Charlie Gere
Click here to book
Gere's starting point is how the work of Jacques Derrida and those he influenced allow us to consider the relation between the human and the technical. One of the most important ideas emerging out of Derrida’s development of grammatology is Bernard Stiegler’s ‘originary technicity’, which was also greatly influenced by palaeoanthropologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan’s ideas about the relation between human bipedality and technicity. Following Leroi-Gourhan Stiegler proposed that technics invents the human rather than the other way round, or that the human and the technical co-evolve. Stiegler never properly engaged with psychoanalysis, other than a late engagement with Winnicott and the Transitional Object. The work of Jacques Lacan is largely missing from Stiegler’s thought, a lacuna Gere wishes to address by way of a consideration of the relation between bipedality and the necessity for premature birth in humans. For Lacan the latter is crucial in the emergence of the symbolic order. As Lorenzo Chiesa puts it ‘Lacan postulates a primordial biological discord between man and his environment, centred on premature birth and a subsequent disorder of the imagination, from which language and the Symbolic arise immanently’. He suggests that, for Lacan, ‘the human being is born with foetalised traits, that is to say deriving from premature birth’. Henry Sullivan invokes Lacan to ask whether ‘the most elementary stone tools to be regarded as indications of human desire’. Here there might seem to be a possible connection between the work of Lacan and that of Stiegler, and a single sentence in the first volume of his magnum opus Technics and Time offers a potential Lacanian slant to Stiegler’s thought. He writes that ‘Flint is the first reflective memory, the first mirror’. Thus, following Lacan and Sullivan, perhaps the earliest flint tools and all our tools since, up to the Metaverse, are objets petit a, and that the specific human relation to technicity is one of lack and desire.
Charlie Gere is professor of media theory and history at the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, and the author of a number of books, most recently Unnatural Theology: Religion, Art and Media after the Death of God (2019), I Hate the Lake District (2020) and World’s End (2022).
Thursday 6th June 2024 | 6:00 - 7:30 pm
The Birth of Ecopsychology
Anouchka Grose
Click here to book
This talk will focus on the work of Theodore Roszak, who coined the term ‘ecopsychology’ in the early nineties. With hindsight, his ideas seem extraordinary prescient and useful for thinking about how to respond to climate-related distress.
Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of CFAR and The College of Psychoanalysts-UK. She has written non-fiction: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010) and Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), as well as writing fiction: Ringing for You (Harper Collins, 1999) and Darling Daisy (Harper Collins, 2000). She is the editor of Hysteria Today (2015), a collection of essays on hysteria in the contemporary psychoanalytic clinic. Her journalism is published in The Guardian, and she also writes for numerous art and fashion publications. She has taught at Camberwell School of Art and gives talks on art and psychoanalysis in museums and galleries, as well as sometimes speaking on the radio.
