Institute of Psychoanalysis Summer School 2016

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The Institute of Psychoanalysis is offering a three-day introduction to key concepts in psychoanalysis at Birkbeck, University of London. Our inaugural Summer School will give you the opportunity to meet practicing analysts who will lead seminars and discussions about current topics in the field.

The course will run 13th - 15th July from 10am - 6pm. There will be an optional film screening followed by psychoanalytic discussion on Thurs 14th July from 6pm - 9.30pm.

The Summer School welcomes current undergraduate and postgraduate students from any discipline or background.

Event programme:

Weds 13th July

10 – 10.30: Registration and Coffee

10.30 – 11.30: Seminar 1 - Jonathan Sklar 'Europe in dark times - psychoanalytic understanding of hate and prejudice'

In a wide-ranging essay, Dr.Sklar examines unconscious cultural threads within psychoanalytic trainings in Europe. He compares the unconscious complexities within the narration of an individual analysis as being embedded in the conscious and unconscious cultural histories and historical traumas that can be engaged with in the analytic dyad. In particular the freedom in which analytic training is enabled or curtailed and it’s impact on the candidate is examined. This is particularly pertinent when analytic training takes place in and beyond times of conflict.

Forms of memorial are examined as part of the quest to understand our bloody European heritage.

The analytic situation as well as the unconscious pulls in an analytic society both requires bravery to explore the free associations of the mind. Once discovered both require mourning as expressions of the reality of what the past has really been like, in all its various imaginary forms. Endings may be found in radical places, which may shed more light and meaning on our personal past within the context of our culture. This is ever more important as Europe (as well as in the US), finds itself in darkening times

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 - 2.30: Seminar 2 - David Bell 'Psychoanalysis: a body of knowledge of mind and culture'

What is psychoanalysis? What kind of knowledge is it and what is its place in the history of ideas? What are the core features that characterise the psychoanalytic account of mind? How do we understand the differences between psychoanalysis and other disciplines? In exploring these questions, David will also touch on some philosophical issues that arise when considering psychoanalysis as 'knowledge of the mind'.

2.30 – 3.30: Discussion

3.30 – 4: Tea break

4-5: Seminar 3 - Ruth McCall: 'Hysteria and the body in psychoanalysis'

This talk will look at Psychoanalysis' original involvement with hysterics, what this interaction produced in terms of psychoanalytic ideas and a consideration of how the body speaks psychosomatically and hysterically to others and will include brief clinical examples. 

5-6: Discussion

Thursday 14th July

10 – 10.30: Registration and Coffee

10.30 – 11.30 Seminar 4 – Mary Target 'What forms of evidence might throw light on the value of psychoanalysis?'

Popper famously asserted that psychoanalysis, like Darwinism, was unscientific as it could not be empirically falsified. Mary’s talk will suggest that we have got better at testing psychoanalysis, through for example psychoanalytic developmental research, which has produced empirical models of the mind and personality, and process and outcomes research, which offer some evidence of how what happens in treatment can be related to better or worse outcomes. Mary will suggest that attachment research has strengthened psychoanalytic developmental theory and connected it to other disciplines, while ‘mixed methods’ outcomes research, in psychoanalysis and mental health treatments generally, offers the most promising empirical approach to understanding therapeutic effectiveness.

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 – 2.30: Seminar 5 – Kate Pugh 'Psychoanalysis in psychiatry'

Exploring the understanding of severe mental illness from a psychoanalytic perspective. Kate will refer to clinical cases from reflective practice and from psychotherapy in a psychiatric setting. The impact of unbearable states of mind of patients on staff and our capacity to metabolise these experiences is presented as central to mental health services.

2.30 – 3.30: Discussion

3.30 – 4: Tea break

4-5: Seminar 6 – Rosine Perelberg: 'The construction of meaning in the psychoanalytic process'

The beginning of psychoanalysis was marked by an archaeological metaphor in that the origins of trauma could be located in a distant past that was the analytic task to uncover. If dreams provided a paradigm for this first phase of psychoanalytic discoveries, enactments in the analytic process are the paradigm for the understanding of that which has not yet reached representation. There are implications for a theory of technique: the role of the analyst is not that of interpreting unconscious fantasies that  “are already there” in the mind of the patient but, rather, that of inaugurating the symbolic domain and the world of representations. In this lecture I will give a clinical example that illustrates how this works in the analytic setting.

5-6: Discussion

6-6.30: Break

6.30 – 9.30: Optional film screening and psychoanalytic discussion – Andrea Sabbadini ('Her' 2013 Spike Jonze)

Friday 15th July

10 – 10.30: Registration and Coffee

10.30 – 11.30: Seminar 7 - Gigliola Fornari Spoto: 'Training as a psychoanalyst'

Gigliola will talk about the practical and emotional aspects of training as a
psychoanalyst and acquiring a psychoanalytical identity. She will describe the
structure and requirements of the training and admission process and will also talk
about her experience working as a psychoanalyst.

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 – 2.30: Seminar 8 – Robin Anderson and Shirley Borghetti Hiscock: 'Child and adolescent analysis'

Robin Anderson will start with a brief history of Child Psychoanalysis with its two main approaches.

Interest in children’s minds, their preoccupations and fears could inform adult analysts about their theories and led via the Little Hans case where a father was guided by Freud to help his 4 year old son to be freed of his horse phobia to analysis for children in their own right.  The two pioneers were Melanie Klein in Berlin and London in 1926 and Anna Freud in Vienna and London in 1938.  Winnicott’s analytic work grew from both of these women.

Robin will discuss how child analysis differs from and is similar to adult analysis and how a treatment where the setting is a playroom can be similar to adult analysis with the couch and free associations as the means of uncovering the unconscious and how for Melanie Klein at least led to a different understanding of what happens in adult analysis. I will then end with a brief look at where child analysis is today.

This will be followed by Shirley Borghetti Hiscock, a child psychoanalyst, giving a brief presentation of her analysis of an 8 year-old boy.  This will give a chance to see child analysis in action followed by a brief discussion between the two of us about how we could understand what was happening. In this way we hope to show how we do our thinking about children’s play and our responses to what happens in a session.

2.30 – 3.30: Discussion

3.30 – 4: Tea break

4-5:Seminar 9: Stephen Grosz '' The Examined Life' — Psychoanalysis and Storytelling’

The author Karen Blixen said, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story
or tell a story about them.” But what if a person can’t tell his story? What if his
story tells him?

In his book, The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz distils 50,000 hours of clinical work
as a psychoanalyst into a series of jargon-free stories. A Sunday Times bestseller
and a New York Times Notable Book, The Examined Life has been translated into
more than thirty languages. It was described by Michiko Kakutani, in the New York
Times, as sharing “the best literary qualities of Freud’s most persuasive work…a
series of slim, piercing chapters that read like a combination of Chekhov and
Oliver Sacks.”

In this seminar, Stephen Grosz will look at psychoanalytic writing and ask how
does the case history work? What are we doing – what is our aim – when we write
up our clinical work? With selected readings from The Examined Life, Stephen
Grosz will discuss storytelling and its centrality to psychoanalysis.

5 - 5.30: Discussion

5.30 - 6.30: Reception