Institute of Psychoanalysis Summer School 2017

The Institute of Psychoanalysis and Birkbeck Institute of Social Research are offering a three-day introduction to key concepts in psychoanalysis. 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 17th - 19th July from 10am - 6pm. There will be a film screening followed by psychoanalytic discussion on Tues 18th July from 6pm - 9.30pm.

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

Event programme:

Monday 17th July

9.30 – 10.15: Registration and coffee

10.15 - 10.30: Introduction with Catalina Bronstein and Stephen Frosh

10.30 – 11.30: Seminar 1: David Bell - 'What is psychoanalysis?'

This lecture will introduce psychoanalysis by exploring the core features that characterise the psychoanalytic model of the mind. It will also situate psychoanalysis within the history of ideas, looking at its relation to other disciplines and touching on some broader philosophical issues.

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 - 2.30: Seminar 2: Robin Anderson and Shirley B Hiscock - 'Child and adolescent psychoanalysis'

In this lecture, Robin 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.

Shirley Borghetti Hiscock, a child psychoanalyst, will then give a brief presentation of her analysis of an 8 year-old boy. This will provide an opportunity to see child analysis in action followed by a brief discussion between Robin and Shirley about how we could understand what was happening. In this way the talk aims to show how psychoanalysts think 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 3: Stephen Frosh - 'Psychoanalysis and culture' 

Psychoanalysis has had a huge cultural impact, especially in the West, over the past 120 years. In this talk, I look at the nature of this impact, outlining how psychoanalysis has engaged with cultural issues and exploring its relevance in this field today. The talk will range across psychoanalysis’ Jewish origins, its colonial implications, occultism and its application to literature and the humanities

5 - 6: Discussion

Tuesday 18th July

10 – 10.30: Registration and coffee

10.30 – 11.30 Seminar 4: Stephen Grosz - '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.

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 – 2.30: Seminar 5: 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. Brief clinical examples will be included.

2.30 – 3.30: Discussion

3.30 – 4: Tea break

4-5: Seminar 6: 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.

5-6: Discussion

6-6.30: Break

6.30 - 9.30:  Andrea Sabbadini - 'Intimacy in a Virtual World: Reflections on the film 'Her' (Spike Jonze, 2013)'

Following a screening of the Oscar-winning film 'Her' (Spike Jonze, 2013), scenes from the film will be referenced to discuss a psychoanalytic perspective on some of the issues raised by the major changes in intimate relationships made available by new technologies. To what extent can virtual relationships replace physical ones? Discussion will include the implications of using electronic tools such as Skype in the special intimate relationship that is the psychoanalytic one.

Wednesday 19th July

10 – 10.30: Registration and coffee

10.30 – 11.30: Seminar 7: Jonathan Sklar - 'Thinking on the border: memory and trauma in society'

Walter Benjamin described that prior to the First World War, experience was passed down through the generations in the form of folklore and fairy tales.

How does an individual human being return from the far reaches of certain terrible experiences?

How do we manage to deal with memory and trauma in our modern times?

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch

1.30 – 2.30: Seminar 8: 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.

2.30 – 3.30: Discussion

3.30 – 4: Tea break

4-5:Seminar 9: Rosine Perelberg - 'Negative hallucinations, dreams, hallucinations: the framing structure and its representation in the analytic setting'

This talk will explore the meaning of a patient’s hallucinatory experiences in the course of an analysis. Perelberg will locate her understanding within the context of Green’s ideas on the role of the framing structure and the negative hallucination in the structuring of the mind. The understanding of the transference and counter-transference was crucial in the creation of meaning in this process.

There is an intrinsic link between the framing structure as the place for symbolization and the analytic experience that will reproduce aspects of the patient’s experience with the primary object. The framing structure is not perceptible as such, but only through the productions that it gives rise to in the setting. It is in the après coup of an analysis that one has access to the traces left by the traumatic, archaic past, some of which will find representation for the first time in the here and now of the analytic process.

5 - 5.30: Discussion

5.30 - 6.30: Reception