Resurgence of Freud

00:00:00 Okay. >> Okay. Uh today's I'm Ednner Sessian, director of the helix center. As you know, today's round table is on the resurgence of Freud and you are in one of the most Freudian places in the world sitting here. So uh we'll see how it goes.

00:00:31 Uh just to let you know that our next round table is on October 4th on memory on November 8 I believe and Marie it's the uh round table on failure. We are working for the round table in this early December and we are also working towards a two-day a weekend event in April that will be focusing on

00:01:04 artificial intelligence. uh so today's uh round table I will go quickly through the uh participants and then we'll start and uh lift your hand when raise your hand when I call your name Steven Rex Dames is graduate of Columbia University wrote his thesis on the history of British non-medical psychoanalysis

00:01:34 arguing that out of various labor and gender conflict surrounding lay analysis in early 20th century Britain's certain 20th century Britain certain defining aspects of the modern psychoanalytic profession were born this thesis entitled lay labor an analytic conflict the development and character of British non-medical psychoanalysis 19 1893 1930 received departmental honors and the

00:02:06 Albert Marian Ellburg Modern History Prize from the university. He's also the recipient of the 2024 American Psychoanalytic Psychonic Association Undergraduate Essay Prize of his paper called Esan Shibulet Freud fatherhood and the fate of psychoanalysis. He currently works as an editorial intern at N plus1 magazine. Ben Kafka

00:02:37 is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Greenwich Village. He serves on the faculty of faculties of the Colombia psychoanalytic center and the Dwit Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Wild Cornell. He's co-founder of the Princeton's new seminar on interdisciplinary psychic studies. He was originally trained as a historian. He taught at NYU for 20 years before leaving to focus on clinical

00:03:07 work. His first work, The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork, was a historical and psychological investigation into our encounters with bureaucracy when things go wrong. Is currently working on a book for Random House about people about how people drive each other crazy. Should be interesting reading. Cassie Kaufman is a licensed clinical

00:03:37 psychologist and psychoanalyst, founder and director of Green Clinic, a sliding sliding scale psychoanalytically oriented training clinic in Fort Green, Brooklyn. She supervises, teaches, and introduces psycho addicting practice to students and early career psychologist, social workers, and so counselors. She's also a founding member of the foundation for community psychoanalysis and nonprofit whose mission is to make psychoanalysis more accessible to his

00:04:10 historically marginalized people. She is a graduate. She she received her doctorate at Delpa University where she researched psychic theories of visual thought and creativity. about sargonic theories of visual thought and creativity. She then trained at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center and was a postdocctor fellow at Columbia University Counseling and Psychological Services.

00:04:46 She completed her training at the New York Psychoic Institute and Society where she is now on the faculty. She's also been a fellow of the Melanie Klein Trust and the American Psychonetic Association. David Russell is an associate professor of English at UCLA where he teaches 19th century literature as well as film philosophy and psychoanalysis. He's the author of Marian Milner on creativity

00:05:17 uh in Oxford University Press and tacked aesthetic liberalis liberalism and the essay form in 19th century and Craig Tomlinson is a psychoanalyst in private practice assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University where he has taught at the center for psychonic theory and research for two

00:05:47 decades and directs the Freud curriculum. He's designed courses and taught courses on Freud and psychoanalysis to graduate and undergraduate students. He's currently president of the association for psychoactantic medicine and has long served on the board of sigman Freud archives of the library of congress. He has written on Freud, the history of psychoanalysis and the development of psychology in 18th century Germany and has translated works

00:06:18 from German on psychoanalysis, art and music. So with that we start and Tell us about resurgence of

00:06:52 >> well I'll start >> um first to thank you um I really I mean you've been putting these together for years. I've never actually been in person. I've been streaming. I've been watching and um and it's in previous in its previous incarnation as well. It's such a contribution to um um not just our discipline, right, but just knowledge in New York City. It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

00:07:23 >> Um and you know, of course, I'm especially happy to be here talking about this topic, uh which is one that is dear to me. It's been really sort of extraordinary. I started analytic training in 2010. Um, and just to see what's happened in the last 15 years uh in New York City and beyond to see the kind of surge of enthusiasm for psychoanalysis Freudian and other um has obviously been very very invigorating and above all and I

00:07:54 really hope Stephen that you're not going to mind that I I'm going to sort of call you out in this way, right? But to see like exceptionally bright young people drawn to um this this kind of fusty discipline that we love >> and it's been really really um I don't know there. How's that to get us going? >> Yeah. Well, >> sure. >> Oh, okay. This isn't doing it. >> I see. Okay. Okay. Do I should I do I do

00:08:26 I want Do I need to go again? The louder the louder the better. >> The louder the better. >> Yeah. >> Testing. >> Okay. >> Testing. Do I need to annunciate too or can I just like can I just slur my speech louder? If I could mumble louder, like would that be acceptable? Well, if I was like if I was going to like like chat GPT the main points, right, it was gratitude, uh, enthusiasm, right? doing. So, do I doing okay so

00:08:57 far? Um, so much that has happened in the last 15 years in New York and elsewhere. Am I doing okay? >> Um, my excitement about it, right? that's enthusiasm again recapitulated and apologizing to Stephen for being about to call him out but then saying like really from my perspective um which you know we can talk about this more that these just extraordinarily bright young people who have found their way into our um I think we it's fair to say

00:09:29 somewhat fusty old discipline >> um and then I gesture to you >> thank you for uh calling me bright and also thank you for inviting me here. Uh I think yeah I mean I think I'm a case study in this group more than anything else. Uh I mean I obviously have you know read and devoted a lot of the last whatever three or four years of my time to reading psychoanalysis you know theory and history and whatever more than that but that's you know very limited when compared to everyone else. What I think I am is someone who, you

00:10:01 know, represents something possibly like I I mean even though I'm someone who likes fustiness, you know, in general, I think there is a sort of weird way where like, you know, if I was at a party, which I was last night talking about this, people know what I'm talking about or like that's and that's something strange. Like I mean if I was at a party 2009 being like well I'm I read Freud and >> like Freud and think about you know whatever whatever if I'm thinking about Melanie Klein people are either going to you know look at me with derision or are

00:10:33 going to be you know more I mean yeah they're either going to look at me with derision or they're not going to know what I'm talking about. I don't think that's the case anymore. Terry is this associate director. He was in fact >> I mean we do Oh, is that better now? >> Yeah. >> Okay. That wasn't that wasn't me. Um and now I sound like God.

00:11:08 >> Um we do seem to be having a moment, right? >> Yeah. I mean, I always wonder if it's just me a little bit because like I mean, as much as there are like some New York Times articles, someone who like only started reading Freud when those New York Times articles started coming out, like sort of coincidentally, but >> it it feels a little like, oh, maybe this is just my circle of strange New York lefties who are reading Freud. But I do I mean I I mean I mean this is something I guess we should think about is like who is this the case for and to what extent is this the case for? Uh

00:11:39 like is this just a purely cultural phenomenon? Like I don't know. I'm not a clinician obviously so it's like are there more people going into analysis are like is that being felt on that side? Well, speaking as a clinician who runs a clinic, I have seen many more people reaching out specifically for psychoanalysis. You know, when I started in the work and I told people I was an analyst, they would say, "That's still real. That's a thing people still do." And there was usually disbelief that I was met with. And now the response is much more often. Oh, oh, cool. Tell me

00:12:10 about it. Um so I have therapists who are coming to train at green clinic which is the practice that I run specifically to get more insight into how one does psychoanalysis and then there are more and more people reaching out saying I want psychoanalysis. I've tried CBT. I've tried something else and I want something more depth oriented. So you know it's a small case study as well but I don't think it's just you and your circle. How many people does the clinic treat?

00:12:42 >> Hundreds at this point or hundreds of people have passed through the clinic. Um, >> how did it come up as a topic for this round table? >> I think primarily because uh I heard so I walked into these through these doors as I told you. in 1972. So I have been a psychologist for a long

00:13:14 time and uh but I was surprised uh some time ago, some months ago when I heard that there was a resurgence of interest in Freud primarily amongst the younger people and so I thought well if there's a resurgence of Freud's ideas and Freud it. We should talk about it and see what's going on and learn about it and understand the

00:13:46 phenomenon. >> And do is it a a New York resurgence or do we see it as a having a wider geographical range? >> Isn't this just so often the difficulty with like thinking about culture in the US is like everyone who thinks about culture in the US is in New York. So, it's hard to actually like broaden that. Like, you know, every time the New York Times publishes an article about like, you know, are young people enjoying life? Are they like getting out and having fun? They always feature like

00:14:17 young people in New York City. And I was like, well, >> yeah. I I don't >> I think it's a I think it's a broader phenomena because um there is a person in um I think San Francisco Hannah Zean who couldn't participate at this round table because she has a meeting going on in New York at the same time. Uh but Hannah uh who has a magazine a journal uh

00:14:50 is also said that there is a resurgence in >> Yes. So yeah, it seems to be a broader phenomena.

00:15:21 Uh whether it extends beyond the US, I don't know. I don't think uh in certain countries like France they have ever focused on there being less interest. Right. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Well to elaborate on Ed's point I mean Hannah Zeven's publication pair practice has been really popular. I mean she's putting out issue after issue full of essays from academics and other young scholars about psychoanalytically informed political questions and reading

00:15:51 literature through a psychoanalytic lens. And I can't imagine this being possible 10 years ago, 15 years ago for it to have the success it's having now. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I was just going to as a footnote in Los Angeles when I offer courses on psychonalysis, you you're turning students away, which I think was never the you can't fit them all in the room. So I noticed this an very anecdotally, too. I I'm just curious about the um the range of it,

00:16:22 but there's Yeah. I mean I mean speaking of Hannah Evan like last night I was at the first night of the week-long Paraprais film festival in Brooklyn uh which is just all you know psychometic films. I mean and not like David Lynch like last night was just all of Freud's home movies uh that we watched without I mean none of them are sound and it's just Hannah reading various Freud letters over these sort of I mean both boring and kind of horrifying movies in many ways. like they're both like shots of dogs and shots of, you know, family members who

00:16:54 will die in the Holocaust in like 5 years. And the room was packed. Like I mean it is like I mean they did turn people away like at the door uh which is I mean yeah >> can I just add real quick about why what made us think about this aside from Kim promoting it a lot by the way it's true. um there's the direct line to it that we're just interested oh is it a phenomenon let's look into it but then of course if

00:17:24 you look at all the other topics we are interested in then I guess subliminally that we are always holding these in the psychopathic institute which is you know a little bit of maybe having some effect but all the other topics we're interested in having to do with AI and sort of mo the sort of postmodern state has raised this concern about sort of an antihumist trend in our culture and I think that encourages a lot of people to jump back to some form of humanism which I think Freud might partake.

00:17:58 >> No, I noticed on the brochure that we are looking at Freud through rosecoled glasses or he's looking at us through ro colored glasses but I I recall when there were articles in the New York Times that pictured him crying many many years ago at hull. So my cynical side that first thought um in response to the idea of a resurgence of Freud well nowhere to go but up um

00:18:29 after many decades um I I don't think it's really true. I think it's real what people are noticing. We've certainly noticed it teaching um in the last four or five years in in a in a rather dramatic way. Um and um the enthusiasm from a lot of it is driven with enthus by enthusiasm from young people which is especially um nice to see like Stephen who was one of our most among many brilliant students at Colombia in the

00:19:01 past few years um who um really have made the experience uh very exciting even for people who have been teaching this stuff for a while. So, >> and and it seems to be extending into the clinical sphere as well. I I >> we're both on faculty at the Columbia at the psychoanalytic center and you you saw the email, right, that a hundred people have enrolled for all the training programs offered by the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center across

00:19:33 all the programs. So, the central kind of analytic training program, the transference focused psychotherapy program. I you know better than I do all of them but I mean a hundred new people I guess mostly physicians >> who have signed up it's an extraordinary number >> they've diversified their you know outreach actually so there there are a lot more programs but I think it's real there are even more formal candidates >> um for full psychoanalytic training this year

00:20:03 >> by you know almost twofold than than last. So um I think it's very real. And the classes that we um that Stephen took uh with Adele Tutter and and me um started four or five years ago. I can't remember it, but we had a handful of students and were grateful to start give to, you know, have a class and this year we

00:20:34 maxed out even though they raised the limit to 20 students and we had a waiting list of eight. Um, and we thought of dividing it into two classes, but there's only so much of us to go around. Um, yeah. I I guess what I would say is that I mean there is a sense that like psychoanalysis may have never gone away in like the English department. Exactly. Like like I mean people have always you

00:21:05 know whatever you read Lacon or people think about whatever and whatever that's always been a type of undergraduate I think even in the 2010s who like read these later people but I think what's particular maybe or one of the many particular things about this moment is that it's actually people wanting to read both clinical work and wanting to read Freud like and that's I I don't I mean we I think should and will think a lot more about like what particularly what Freud actually means to people but like this isn't just like a revival of like theory bros. this is a revival of

00:21:38 people who are interested in like specifically you know clinical psychoanalysis or psychoanalysis from its origins like I don't >> at least I found that >> could you say a bit more in other words how much interest is there in Freud's actual ideas >> I mean I mean psychoanalysis he has developed and developed for for many years and there have been many other schools and so on and but the

00:22:11 specific how much interest in Freud's >> I mean I think there's an incredible amount of like online interest in like vulgar Freudianism certainly in like Freud >> yeah and like you know thinking about like oh well like look at her id acting out like that's not an interest in Freudianism that's an interest in like using these terms in a tweet but I also think like for instance like the first class I took with Dr. Sison was just a Freud seminar. Like that's all we read was Freud and that had as much of enrollment as the post Freud seminar

00:22:43 which I took. Um and I mean if we if you read something like paraprais like yes there's a lot of interest in reading fanon. There's a lot of interest in like you know reading a lot of French psychoanalyst but there also is just there's a lot of stuff about Freud. Like I I do I I don't I really am speaking just completely off the cuff here, but it's just I I do think there is an interest in like you know actually trying to work through some of the you know Freud's case studies or like let's actually revisit you know whatever his different models of the mind to think

00:23:14 about this moment. >> I I mean I can back that up. So I taught at for 10 years I taught a psychoanalysis class at NYU in the department of media culture and communication. Right? So, a kind of media cultural studies kind of class. Um, and I we only read Freud. I read nothing but Freud. Uh, I mean I I signed nothing but Freud, I should say. And enrollment was between 50 and 100 students per semester um consistently for 10 years. I there

00:23:45 was a tre I mean it's just like people were showing up over and over and over again uh to read Freud and only Freud. My my sense also building on your point earlier Stephen is that there is a renewed interest in the clinical but not just theoretically speaking there are more people interested in going into candidates you know into analytic training there's a whole new institute that's been built that has a lot of popularity pulseion and I think that the current moment is so

00:24:16 counter to a 45inut just focusing on one thing at a time with another person that there's something very appealing about that now. Not just reading the work but participating in the experience of a psychoanalysis or at least a deeply engaged therapy that um for someone to be present with their own thoughts to be asked to remove the distractions of a screen or any other outside input and just focus on their mind. Um so >> it's like reading poetry or reading

00:24:46 novels. It's countercultural now. >> Right. Right. Right. >> Yeah. >> Right. Right. And I think I mean I think therapy has become much more mainstream sort of wellness culture. The idea of like having your own therapist. It's not stigmatized. It's sort of a status symbol. And so how do you get more radical than that? How do you move out of the mainstream of just having a therapist? Maybe you have a psychoanalyst >> as I mean I'm currently in analysis at um and I mean I I mean after reading it

00:25:17 for so many years I've only been in analysis for like five months now. But it is I there is a real and it has like changed me and has made me feel better. Um I think what the one point I would add is that I think what psychoanalysis gives this moment is that in so many ways both the online world and the political world we're in just like strips people of dignity. I guess like everyone feels like you're either part of a group or and you know that group could not matter or just you yourself

00:25:48 are replaceable and you know whatever but psychoanalysis I think treats or at least the best versions of it treats people treat people as like complicated and interesting and like you are worth the time like you aren't just a you know a quick fix away like you actually are even though whatever single person is that way I think that's kind of and worth paying attention to. Yeah. Right. Like how much are people paying attention to the each other's expressions? I don't know.

00:26:21 >> It is true, right? that I I I think something that probably most of the people here in this room or who will be watching this online um who have had a relationship an ongoing relationship to psychoanalysis like most of us as grateful as we are for what psychoanalysis has given us and we are right it it also sort of is so much part of our lives and has been so much part of our lives in some cases for a very very long time that um you know it's easy to forget about what it was like when it was new to us >> um And it's also easy to miss just how

00:26:54 um I don't know I mean rarified the experience is and possible. I mean, one of the things I kept coming up again when I was against when I was teaching the class in NYU is, you know, I'd make a kind of casual reference to like the New Yorker cartoons, like the psychoanalytic New Yorker cartoons. And very few, if any, of my students had that frame of reference, right? Like they didn't read the New Yorker, and they certainly didn't know, even if they had happened to see one of those cartoons, that what the cartoon was about, right, was something called

00:27:26 psychoanalysis, right? They had no idea what those two people were doing next to like why the cat was on a couch. They just, you know, cats are on couches, so what's the big deal? >> There should be a cartoon about that. >> There should be a cartoon about that. Exactly. >> I don't have data on it, but I have the impression that for a number of years those cartoons kind of disappeared. >> No, I mean I think that might I mean I think a lot of things have changed in the culture, right? >> And and people are getting their sort of squares with clever things in other formats and other forms in other media. Um and um and and you know maybe it

00:27:59 turns out actually that some some of that clearing was actually useful because then what we're getting again is precisely like the shock and joy and terror or anxiety anyway of discovery. >> I mean because it doesn't it doesn't necessarily if you just come at it from like a place of first principles like not knowing the sort of culture around it it feels incredibly radical. And I think that's a lot of young people, myself included, came to it from a position of like, well, this is actually like not institutional. Like this is really this is anti-institutional, which I think is I mean, I would argue at

00:28:30 least this is the way it was intended to be and was at its birth. And I I think there's this sort of sense that like increasingly to me at least like psycho I mean psychoanalysis in the United States in the you know later half of the 20th century I think was quite conservative coded and I think it's completely reversed where it's like I mean when Tucker Carlson and I'm forgetting her name uh Candace uh Candace Owens were like you know lambasting Freud together on their show talking about seduction theory which is its own type of anti-semitism that they

00:29:02 were doing of Like they also recognize too though from the other side of the aisle that psychoanalysis is now coded as something of the left that it's now like this is what those crazy lefties are doing and we're going to you know and whatever >> right that that it's a liberatory practice that it's about sort of disentangling the psychic knots that create a sort of inner oppressive or repressive regime. So is there something political about engaging in a psychoanalysis that's you know freeing the self

00:29:34 Well, there's this idea of a resurgence. Um, what do we think or could we elaborate more on what the reasons we might imagine forianism had waned for all those decades? Is there we say something about that? I think there's probably multiple reasons. The 80s were really hard. Um, I mean, I think that that's kind of the answer, right? or at least one of them. The 80s were really really hard in all kinds of ways. I I'm not the best

00:30:06 person to speak on this by any means in this room, but I I do think that the rise of more biological psychiatry made a huge difference. The sex panics of the ' 80s made a huge difference and all of this became the Freud wars which were devastating. I think the um I mean I I was trained in graduate school by a guy named Paul Robinson who was an intellectual historian who had been a kind of participant in the Freud wars uh wrote a book called the Freudian left and another book called Freud and his

00:30:36 critics and um which was about what's it about Sulloway Cruz Massan and I can't remember who else and you know that um that there was such a kind of powerful assault from all sides including sides that might have been sympathetic like the New York review of books was relentless, >> right? And and um and so both kind of in up in the kind of you know world of the New York intellectuals but as well as in the world of managed care um we were

00:31:08 under uh such assault and you know and and I'm not sure that anyone could have survived that kind of assault. sort of amazing in the end that we did uh that we are still here at all you know given the kind of 10 15 20 years of of relentless um relentless attacks. >> There's also just the straight economic angle, right? Like with the advent of CBT, it's just so much cheaper. And with healthcare just costs soaring at the end of this, you know, the end of the 20th

00:31:39 century, like why why would you, you know, spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, get this care when you can just, you know, uh go do CBT or also just, you know, take new drugs. >> Dollars and time, thousands of hours. Right. >> In 1961, um, Shawn Dorado, who was the first education director here at the New York Psychoanalytic, predicted quite lonically and off-handedly,

00:32:12 psychoanalysis as a treatment modality will will uh slow will quietly disappear for lack of money. Um, and during those years that Ben was talking about, I thought about that a lot. Um, it it isn't only as a treatment modality that it was disappearing though, as you were saying, as an intellectual endeavor. Um, one thing to add and that is to that is there's a we fell victim

00:32:45 also to what Richard Hofsteader famously described as anti-intellectualism as a very powerful current in American life. It didn't disappear in Argentina or France in the same way during the time but uh at least not to the extent but I do remember it in training. I was in training as a psychiatrist um in the 1980s and early 1990s and boy uh

00:33:16 they there were attempts to get rid of the analytic institute at Colombia alto together um powerful powerful attempts actually so um there were times that were different so one thing I could noted positive also I used for many years I used to each suppose this is getting on to another topic. I used to when I opened my classes on Freud, I had a sheet that was of notes that was titled why Freud

00:33:48 um for the for this is for the analytic center candidates and the first thing I said well believe it or not it's a serious question even here at the analytic center there the viewpoint that this is all old hat and we have much better more modern psychoanalytic stuff. Um it was actually a fairly still is a fairly um significant viewpoint. I don't share it but in any case um I looked at it this year and said it's not necessary. I'm not going to do that. They're interested.

00:34:18 Um so >> can can I add one more factor that I think to the kind of impass that we reached um which is I think that psychoanalysis was actually served very poorly in the end by the humanities in this country and that in that in the kinds of departments that I I so I was at Brown in the mid '9s and um we did not read Freud right but we read lots and lots of lon uh lanian in film theory, Leanian

00:34:49 literary theory, Leanian and other kinds of theories. Some of that work being brilliant work that has really helped me in all kinds of ways and that I feel very attached to sentimentally and conceptually. But um the kind of buyin you needed before you could participate in a conversation in those seminar rooms was extraordinary. Right? These were not rooms where people felt comfortable speaking. There was always always I mean well some people

00:35:19 felt very comfortable of course right but like that that the kind of it it was it was sort of arranged or set up in such a way that you needed to be the master of you need to be in control of a kind of discourse >> that um in order to be authorized to really participate and I think a lot of people eventually just threw up their hands and walked away and went on to do other classes in the humanities you know and so that we reached like as Leanianism also became more and more like it went broke phase and then it's row coco phase, you know, and and as the

00:35:51 kind of curly cues became ever more kind of curly, um I think a lot of people just gave up and that the kind of um the kind of um cooperation collaboration between the kind of academic humanities and psychoanalysis, clinical psychoanalysis in places like this really really broke down and then finally it began to break down. I mean it it sort of it consumed itself also within the university. And then people went on to talk about entirely other things. It would be like unrecognizable I imagine to many people in this room um

00:36:23 not the graduate students sitting behind me but um to many others and so I I think we by which I mean we academics and humanities certainly um are bear a whole lot of responsibility for this and I include myself in that. Can I ask a question of the two academics? Is that with the sort of like you know sustained assault on the on academia and the humanities in particular I mean that's been going on I mean both you know accelerated in the past year but it's been going on for whatever whatever say 10 years say 20

00:36:53 years whatever do you find that the interest in like becoming a clinician amongst like graduate students or junior academics is because the job market is so bad partially Ask ask them >> because like if you just can't find a job at all like Yeah. You mean not even like a non-tenure? I mean, you could just not even find a non-tenure job, >> then this is at least a thing that exists, >> but in New York, >> okay, >> and Vermont, right? Like it it it has to

00:37:26 be said. I mean, there's there's a kind of there's a very um there's a kind of complicated route in California, but New York is really the place where people So, I did a PhD in history out west. I came out here, began teach, yeah, whatever. end up teaching NYU and um and then at a certain point uh bless her, thanks in part to Elizabeth Young Brule, I made the decision I had my own analysis going and then I trained and um and you know in New York you can get a license with a background like mine and

00:37:59 I spent 10 years at the institute like there was a lot of work that went into that um but I did not have I I was not a psychiatrist I was not a clinical psychologist like I did not have a proper clinical background you can't do that anywhere else in the country really. And so um uh so um I think there is something happening where the kind of collapse of the traditional structures of academia um are making becoming a clinician a very very appealing alternative and it is uh and you know

00:38:30 one of the things we're doing in the seminar this new seminar Princeton is talking about that but um I I will say that it's a very kind of um uh it's very restricted in space. geographically. And another way of thinking about it also I think is what makes the boundary funible between the psychoanalytic and the humanistic or and particularly literary scholarship which is was a home for psychonasis even when things were seemed

00:39:03 pretty bad for psychonasis generally in the culture not perhaps as practice which is interesting but as you know for his ideas as you say um part of it is I think this sort of insistence on language that language actually is more complicated than you'd be led to believe from the discourse that we all live in now and a kind of insistence on very careful attention to language that I find my own graduate students being really interested in insisting on

00:39:34 themselves and it's a shared insistence in psychonalysis and in the study of literature um that I think that they have a lot to talk to each other about. >> Do you find that some of your students are interested in becoming clinicians? >> Yes. And that's the new thing I think because um it's this question about sagonasis

00:40:05 being a practice uh and a set of ideas and that um sometimes they dove that dove deals very neatly and sometimes actually they're different uh endeavors. Um and so the interest in the actual practice um does seem to be something that is newly defined and I was thinking about the British context too which is the other background I come from. There's a

00:40:36 great deal of interest in um the British tradition of psychoanalysis as being itself very interested in relational situations. So even if it's not a matter of people wanting to go and train, they want to think about the kind of experience that psychonalysis is as in as a as two people sitting in a room with a frame around it that you know you might be able to find things similar to that in other parts of life like you were saying about this sense that two people paying

00:41:09 attention is shutting out other distractions and phones and the news cycle and the rest of it. that that you know as Winnott liked to point out Freud didn't just invent a discourse he invented um a situation uh which would happen once a week uh where the analysts would always be there in a more or less good mood. I mean he lists all the you know that that people needed this regular space of relation in their lives and I think the students are

00:41:39 quite uh sophisticated about that um and so even if they don't want to train or they're not studying the practice of psychosis they are interested in other kinds of relational modes than maybe the ones that are now most familiar in the world around them like widening the repertoire a bit and psychonalysis one the place where that repertoire does get potentially widened. Maybe not the only place. Um, but it's certainly interesting to them.

00:42:10 Well, that's something that I've been curious about of like which psychoanalytic theorists over the years get drawn into academia affect theorists became curious about Klene and other and now I think there's an interest in Lelanch as well with certain theoreticians and sort of like how come and what then gets elaborated in these clinical theories through an academic >> visiting of the you know >> yes I have one small thought about that as you were speaking And that's just why you know the so one

00:42:42 of the questions is why did it become so benited a field and why is it resurgent now? Well, one reason that's interesting to me about the resurgence is and in in students who are really interested in the British tradition in particular, um they're interested in um reality that is to say Freud's idea about psychic reality uh and that how that gets developed in certain things like when a car playing a reality but the idea that

00:43:12 we can't now avoid the fact that people live in very different realities to each other and maybe they live in realities that don't communicate at all. Um, and that you could avoid that fact until relatively recently. So to go back to these people who were very good at thinking about the baseline of contact with quote unquote real that that you can't take that for granted that there is you know Michael Ballot on the basic fault or the you know the the forenzi

00:43:44 being a figure and that the the the consequences of forens people seem to be interested. I mean, you could say this takes us away from Freud a bit. Um, but it's an aspect there in Freud as a practitioner that you're actually adjusting the reality of the person you're working with or you're you're creating the conditions in which real the relation to reality might get adjusted in a context where there seems to be an umpass

00:44:17 between different people who just can't talk to each other. How do you get back to those baselines? >> And and psychosis has a long tradition of thinking about those kind of baselines. And Milner too, I think she talks about the baseline, you know, even as the visual, the drawn line itself, right? That there's a visual element to all of this that may be um pre-linguistic or if not pre-linguistic, not only linguistic. Um these things I find students getting extremely interested in.

00:44:49 I mean, one of the very exciting things to me about your new book is it's I'm is like how much out there there is still to discover or rediscover and to bring back. And that the resurgence of Freud doesn't only have to be a resurgence of Freud. That we can have a Milner resurgence, too, right? And all these other people who we've thought about, a few of us know about, many of us don't. And beyond these walls, almost nobody does. and and and then then the enthusiasm when actually finally the

00:45:20 stuff is brought back, you know, out of the archives, out of pep web or whatever and out into the world and the Milner the reception of your book and like the um >> uh just the excitement around that. >> That's nice you would say. Yeah, I think that's right. And when you let the when students are going out to find uh places to go, you find, you know, Andre Green coming up quite a lot. Uh Beyon, you know, I mean these these figures who would have been really you know the deep

00:45:51 cuts >> of of the real nerds of psychoanalysis and now it's not so eccentric uh I mean in academia I'm sure psychoanaly have always known a lot about beyond green people but within my job uh people are getting a kind of familiarity of fluency with these thinkers again which is uh good those I know in grad school like like know beyond well like that's a that's a

00:46:21 that's a I mean like thinking about like you know groups is really like that is in in a big way I mean for obvious reasons but also just kind of like >> there are there are there's a lot of talk about beyond like I I've read >> there there's a recent article which comes out in which just came out in the new issue of N plus1 written by Lily Skiras who just wrote the cover the April cover for Harper's about the APA. Um anyway, she wrote about uh group relations >> and uh the conferences >> the conferences uh I mean she went to

00:46:53 the Lester conference and like it's a very smart piece but I mean like you know she references Beyon several times in the piece and like you know the people who I've talked to who've read that piece is like oh yeah Beyon like that it's just kind of like an on on an offhand way like oh yeah that's a person that one knows. This is also your upcoming book sort of looking at mid-century clinions and other and maybe British middle school folks to think about what's going on now and people you know the gaslighting theory and >> just waiting to be sort of brought back to life and really becomes and it's full

00:47:25 I mean it's it's full of problems of course but it's not only full of problems and you know it's so easy to kind of read it as being full of problems than set it down uh it's so much harder but also ultimately I think more rewarding ing to see that along with the problems there's a lot else going on there and that um that really really speaks to the moment we're in. Um and and so the book that I'm working on which is a bit about that feeling of losing our minds um that comes just sometimes in sort of personal like close

00:47:56 relationships you know marriages parents and children friendships even and then you know builds and builds and builds up to like what we all experience when we read the news in the morning you know a kind of a kind of being tossed in or thrown into a kind of paranoid schizoid uh state of mind. There's so much still out there, I think, really that we can um that we can rediscover if we can sort of hold on past the really troubling parts, not without not ignoring them, of course, acknowledging them always. Um and then just like keep going until you get to these really really finely um

00:48:32 and finally sort of theorized dynamically um descriptions of of of very difficult interpersonal relationships. Um, some of it is really, really cool. >> Made me think of two things. Your comment about um the hunger for reality and understanding reality. Um I um have often used as an example

00:49:03 and I think to some success um a famous paper by Jack Arlo from the 1950s um about the two the notion of a metaphor of the two projectors and with the notion that you we should reconceive of reality um not as what we typically think of as what's out there in the window of our five senses, but as a screen in the middle of a room. For some reason, I always imagined this very room actually

00:49:37 maybe thinking of him with a projector at either end, one from outside and one from inside. And when you that's such a useful metaphor and you see sort of a light go off in people struggling with trying to understand the different realities other people seem to be living in particularly in these times. >> Um and then it's a real delight to show them that it's kind of there right there in the interpretation of dreams chapter 7 in many ways also already. Um and that

00:50:10 that is really really something. Um the other thought I had what you were talking about in that the current interest out there in group processes and other things is it has I think uh come into the classroom in the responses that um we've had to teaching Freud's paper on crowd psychology in the last five years in particular that work has assumed a

00:50:42 moving meaningful status that it never did in the classroom between co the um trying to understand the craziness of the mass phenomena >> we're witnessing from social media to paranoid theory to you know all the things that are laid out in that text hypnotic relationship with leaders group ties by identification uh and it's it it I really have a sense

00:51:13 some palpable relief that that students get reading that work in these times. >> Um, and it's very nice to see. I remember one student a couple years ago who came to me with a question about the Freud's comment and about the narcissism of minor differences. And then before I really even answered, she got this look on her face at, "Oh, I get it. It's everywhere." She was looking around. Um

00:51:43 and said, "Yep, just come to a meeting of psychoanalysts sometime." >> Speaking of psych, I have a question for practitioners of psychonata, which I'm not. I mean, one of the appeals I would imagine must be um psychonatic practice as a site of free speech. I mean, it's got to be one of the places where free speech, if free association is really happening, is still happening

00:52:14 or at least happening in a way that really feels possible. >> And and is that is that an a subject of discussion, urgent? Free speech does in clinical settings. like I thought about it but we see the same obstructions we always have >> but but they're interesting but I mean

00:52:45 um >> yeah like in the session the free speech keeps breaking down very importantly but it is also the place where we can talk speak freely about that >> you know and and that's in my sense like in the clinically that's the free speech which is that we can freely speak about what makes actually speaking freely >> so so hard for our patients and for us as well. >> Chiropractice which is sort of unleashed. >> Yeah. >> The things that surge surge forward. Absolutely.

00:53:18 >> But it seems to me there are um practical aspects of psychoanalysis. So that by that I mean uh you go see your analyst, you are free to say whatever you want. If you hit a wall or what we used to call resistance, you meet resistance. Hopefully your analyst helps you overcome it and you go deeper and so on. So that's a

00:53:52 what transpires in an analytic hour. Then there is the whole u of Freud's theory about how development happens, how the mind develops, how conflicts develop, how relationships develop, things like edipal issues and uh pre-ediple issues and uh the particular relevance of

00:54:25 adolescents and uh the matter of sexual differences and so on the interest that you notice amongst the people you deal with in psychoanalysis does that part does that does Freud's do Freud's theories also seem to be of more interest or it's more the practical aspects of the therapy and the analysis that is more interest.

00:54:57 >> It's a good question. I mean I with my students I find certain of Freud's ideas that really take off for them are some of the later idea I mean dreams yes but um morning melancholia uh and even some of the late stuff about analysis terminal internal the sort of tragic side of things uh and I don't yeah I don't find when I was in graduate school we read three essays in the theory of sexuality but I I don't find that's

00:55:28 where the center of I mean this is extremely anecdotal but I I don't find that where is where the center of interest is for them. It's more in these sort of fundamental questions of identity and uh disavow and denial and I mean but it really does some speak to them um as as an as you say these one of these explanatory or >> if not explanatory then at least descriptive uh tools. >> That's interesting that you say that

00:55:59 earlier you brought up the sort of sex panic of the 80s. is a reason why psychoanalysis like you know went into decline. I might argue that one of the reasons that of for psychoanalysis's revival is sort of the modern sex panic which we're in now which is all about childhood like children and sexuality like it's a sort of both you know for good reasons and also for not good reasons. It kind of seems like everyone is obsessed with like children and sex. Like either like children are being abducted or you know there there are powerful cabals of people who are taking children which is both true and untrue

00:56:31 as we know. And like to me that's like psychoanalysis has a language for it and actually has an arsenal to think about like why are people so obsessed with the idea of children having sex? Like why is this something that our whole society seems to be devoted to like left and right? this is a panic and I I don't know to me like at least personally like the three essays was like the text like one of the texts that really spoke to me reading Freud um I don't know it's just like something that I was thinking about and I mean you're also your point about

00:57:02 free speech I I I might as nonclinian respond to that as like you know we're moving into increasingly you know postfree speech era here in the US and I wonder if you know there will be or there already is I don't I don't know a revival in you know thinking about psychoanalysis in places that are not just liberal democracies like you know I mean like Freud talked about like this is I mean Freud thought about I think like is this only possible within a you

00:57:33 know a liberal bourgeoa democracy with ideas of individualism like I don't know like are I I haven't read many I've only read like scant papers on like psychoanalysis you know in postNazi Germany or pre were postalist Russia or in you know post Tuna Argentina like I I don't know I I feel like there should be a revival in interest in thinking about that. >> We'll soon have the Trump Institute for Psychoanalysis as a new name. >> It'll be the best ever.

00:58:05 >> You know a lot of old hippies um including some of the people on staff at Nipy that I know you know complain. They lament that their people don't talk about sex anymore. I'm talking about adults now too >> and that the culture has moved away from that and it I think it is has been demonstrated I know this is off the cuff that younger people are not having as much sex as the wild group parties that I used to always go to. So I wonder if people have um thought about that as a another influence on Freud interest in

00:58:36 Freud. Well, I think the anxiety is about consent of how to be and Ami Sakatu was used the three essays to explore that of like how can someone possibly like know what they're agreeing to when you have an unconscious. >> Yeah. >> Um I mean to to very AI chatbt summarize what her argument is. But I do think that there's been so much reactive anxiety about what it means to be a sexual being when there's so much punishment for like making mistakes and and of course some of those mistakes are like devastating and traumatic for

00:59:07 people but what about the whole range in between? So sort of like young young people becoming sexual in the you know the last sexual beings sexual adults in the last 20 years like how much are they influenced by like super egoic um you have to constrict yourself and is there something useful in Freud's polymorphis perversity for them just understanding what their own desires might be and how to even have a language for it. I don't know. There it seems like a societywide mania, as I said, about like

00:59:39 children and sex. Like there's all these articles written about like children not having enough sex. What are they doing? They're not going out and partying. And there's also all of these, you know, people who go around trying to like ban books with like any little bit of skin in them or any little bit of sex, like any type of discussion of sex. Like I I think there just seems to be like people are obsessed with either the fact that children are not having enough sex or that they are like and like that's like there seems to be no way out there. And I think that's to me that points to like

01:00:09 there's something going on in this society that I think psychonalis could be very useful in diagnosing would be happy. um comments. I had a student not long ago start out saying, you know, well, maybe all these issues about sexuality, I think we're talking about the studies in hysteria, that wouldn't be such an issue now because we're in much more sex positive culture.

01:00:40 And I said, well, not so fast. Those problems aren't solved so easily. um according to according to uh what Freud discovered um and there are infinite infinite defenses and hypocrisies and splitting and um ways to pretend we have dealt with them some of which you mentioned. No,

01:01:10 I >> I also will say that with young patients, I have a lot of like late teenagers into college, like I have a lot of young adults in my practice, >> and when they finally do realize that it's something that we can talk about, >> the level of relief, I mean, of course, they're anxious about it, sure, but there's nowhere else for them to go. Mhm. >> I mean, there's absolutely nowhere else for a young adult to go to have a kind of direct, honest, non-punitive, non-shaming conversation about >> non-performative

01:01:41 >> and or non-performative, right? where they're not being kind of enlisted or enrolled in some agenda that I have for them or where I'm not allowing myself to be enlisted or enrolled in their agenda and then we can just talk about it and you know like Reddit isn't that >> you know and um and um I mean it's not like when I was young like we had a lot of places to go either although we had I think each other in different ways probably than some people do now but um of all the kind of radical things that

01:02:11 psych analysis still is it is a kind of radically there's something about that people can still talk about sex um that especially young people can still talk about sex and not just young people this feels very very important to me but I imagine in your practice too >> you know >> yeah I mean I I both agree and kind I mean it's not like we're living in the most repressive society around sex ever.

01:02:42 I mean like certainly like you know late 19th century Vienna was more repressive. It's more like what is the it's like the type of repression that happens now around sex which is different. Like I cuz I because when you were saying like well there's no place to talk about sex I was like was that was that not true in the '9s? Like was it is it actually like that much different now talking to your friends about sex than it was in 1995? Like I as someone who didn't was not living in 1995 I don't really know but I it just feels I don't It feels strange like how much of an effect is the

01:03:13 internet having? Like how I mean I >> you know I have an answer. >> Yeah. >> Um so when I was growing up in Southern California in the 80s and 90s um if you wanted to see a picture of a naked person, >> right, it was a very hard thing to come by. Right. Fundamentally around images of other people's naked bodies, it was a conditions of scarcity. Right? And now we live in a condition of abundance. It's very hard to get through

01:03:45 a day without seeing an image of somebody else's naked or almost naked body. And um I cannot tell you it was just a very different being a teenager in 1990, right, than it is being a teenager now for that kind of basic sort of materialist reason. And I'm not moralizing. I'm genuinely not moralizing, but I I think we can't just say that there's no difference. There's a tremendous difference. Then the next part being and and and I don't know I'll just say it which is that the kind of body that has been uh the kind of pornographic body that has been sort of

01:04:16 spread everywhere right is like a body that comes from the San Fernando Valley comes from North Hollywood it's a kind of internationalization of a Los Angeles aesthetic a Los Angeles idea of what sex is supposed to be and look like and Los Angeles is not the place to turn to if you want to have X from personal experience. >> Yes, 100% from personal experience. Like I said, I grew up I grew up in San Diego and and and and I'm the child of two

01:04:47 Angelinos and um and um so I I would say that that that that things are in fact radically different and that um and that there are I'm not saying of course no one talks about sex or no one has ever to go talk about sex, but you know based on my own and then and then and I think the other thing is is that people are much more anxious like there is been and I think probably ultimately for the good a kind of sensoriousness that has set in but um but but the sort of activation of the super ego which is always an issue around sex is u I mean people are living

01:05:19 in terror and I think that that's also really important >> all of the changes have not solved the problems of shame and guilt and things and the emotional >> affective um associations with sexual violence >> that just get that just get if anything driven deeper right yeah absolutely Well, I think um we're at this point now

01:05:50 where we should open the floor to the audience if they have any questions and if you do, please come up to the microphone. >> Hi everyone, this has been really interesting panel. Um I was on the uh part of the conversation when we were deciding for the helix center to to do this and the general sense was that there seemed to be more interest in Freud among young people and I think that's how we framed it. There seemed to

01:06:20 be and on the program I noticed today that it says there appears to be a couple times appears to be a renewed interest in Freud. What fascinated me about that question was that um when I was in graduate school and reading, I I did a degree in comparative literature and I noticed that Freud was everywhere. I'd never really felt like it would it had um fallen away in any sense in the sort of intellectual spheres. Um, I remember reading uh an article in the journal Critical Inquiry where they they

01:06:51 did a citational study of all of the theorists that had been referenced the most often in the journal in 2006. And in between 1980 and 2006, Freud was the number one cited person. But I've also seen data that says that in the psycho psychological journals in uh biocsychological frameworks that he's uh cited much more uh or much less frequently that he's it's way down. So my question and it seems like most of the sense that we've

01:07:22 had here today that there seems to be a resurgence feels a little bit anecdotal. Like I've noticed we had a lot of sort of sense of this, but I'm wondering if there are any metrics or or sort of concrete information you could point to that would suggest that it's on the rise in that sort of um therapeutic or sort of uh more clinical practice.

01:07:53 I I mean I think we can definitely point to enrollments at psychoanalytic >> institutes. I I don't have the numbers offhand but you know in the now 15 years that I've been in the profession the numbers of people applying to the institutes has um and again I I can't give you the actual numbers I don't have them and probably a lot of institutes would be loathed to share them but um it it it's it's >> but all those people a lot of people are applying but you know institutes now offer a kind of a range of programs

01:08:25 >> so uh when I was a student at New York Psychoanalytic, there was only one thing you could do is become a psychoanalyst. And so now there is a range and I'm not so sure what percentage of that range is people who actually want to go through a full psychoanalytic training to become psychoanalyst. >> I think that's probably true, right? But none of them are coming to learn CBT. No, but they're coming to learn

01:08:58 psychoactantic psychotherapy or learn more about psychoan but to become a psychoanalyst with the requirements and what the psychoanalysis is about four times a week sessions on the couch etc. I don't know how much interest has increased in that that >> do do you >> this is also anecdotal but just attending different conferences over the last 15 years how much um more colorful

01:09:29 they've become >> both in terms of people's hair and their skin color and so on you know that there's just u when I used to go to the American Psychological Association's division of psychoanalysis conferences um 15 years ago it was I was the youngest est person there always it was like maybe me and five other young people and now I'm the oldest person there it feels like so >> we had spoken earlier about the sort of economics of who goes into well first of all can patients uh afford psychoanalysis which is an important uh

01:10:01 limiting factor and I think you mentioned that in terms of its sliding away when CBT was being offered insurance was happier to pay for CBT they thought it was time limited and such but the other thing is now with tea counseling going on there's large need for more therapists and I'm I'm interested in the fact that at the other end of the spectrum they're all these people some of them coming out of the humanities but not exclusively who are being recruited quickly because we need to take care of people in a tele counseling basis I mean to scale up and

01:10:31 I think the people who select themselves to do that tend to be more interested in analytic thoughts I mean I think before they get started they think well what's it like to be a therapist and I think still the model for what's it like to be a therapist is sort of loosely Freudian. So whereas at the at one end the sort of orthodox end of four time a week you know rigorous psychoanalytic training uh that's definitely waned and a lot of people are trying to apply that as a model to other less um extensive forms

01:11:04 of therapy. And it makes me think that perhaps for a future round table there could be something on the proletarianization of the mental health professions right like more and more therapists what whatever their backgrounds are essentially doing are you know are now working in these factories where they're uh forced to see huge numbers of patients in quick succession recordkeeping dealing with the insurance companies that that I think that's really even more than AI and all of this I think that's what's going to change the mental health lens landscape in this

01:11:35 country >> is a kind of proletarianized therapist. >> Same thing in academia. >> Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. >> Yeah. I mean like you know you have 60 patients same you know 400 students. So >> sum up related to this uh yesterday I asked chat GPT is there resurgence in Freud going on today and they said only selectively. Um it's more >> first said excellent question. uh it's it said um selectively um it's

01:12:10 more cultural than actual people going into therapy and most interestingly they specifically mentioned this round table at the helix center going on as an example of it being more relevant today. Uh first I want to thank the panel for a very generative set of commentaries. Uh the list of my associations and memories is far much is

01:12:42 far greater than the time I I should take and and and I won't. The first thing I noticed, the first thing I noticed about the youth is uh my grandson in his early 20s trying a number of fields read a Freud biography. In May, he was awarded a PhD in clinical psychology. He's interested in this and interested in it in a very specific clinical and research way. in his now post-doal fellowship. Well, his dissertation was with a multi-sighted

01:13:13 numerical kind of thing and he's also interested in listening very closely to individual patients and he wants that kind of dual focus going forward. The next thing came much later and that's the mention of three essays. When I was 17 years old and in college, I read three essays as an undergraduate. My first exposure to Freud, I became a Freudian. From that one essay, I said,

01:13:44 "Wow, this guy knows my mother." Um, I'll stop there since I've gotten a laugh, but thank you very much. >> Thank you. This is um a fantastic conversation. I have two questions. Um we talked a lot about what we can maybe describe as a rift in theory and practice. We have uh clinicians, we have

01:14:14 people from humanities, academics versus people who work um in a you know analytic setting. And I was wondering, I mean, this is a long discussion, um, these two sides of tech analysis, and I wonder how much this sort of discontent or like irreducible tension between these two aspects go back way down to the zero level of of black analysis. I mean, Freud, you know, um, writes, uh, comes from neurological

01:14:46 studies on eels all the way to treaties on art history. like it is a discipline that is doesn't fit easily between let's say stem positivist psycho psychology or the humanities. So there so how much is that what we maybe diagnose as a problem in the 80s um a division between uh that runs to the very core of the discipline itself. So that's a sort of methodological qu question and the other

01:15:17 one would be if we talk about the question of theory and practice and there's another field word that is a long-standing issue namely politics. Um so I was wondering if it if if the question is the relevance of Freud. We we could say no there has been there has been um a re relevance in in the in the field of politics for a while. Like if you think about um you know a theory of

01:15:49 uh irrational choices like why do people choose something against their own interest or voluntary servitude that goes back you know me coming from Germany you know a postNazi world where you know the critical theory the Frankfurt school was precisely interested in that question why do people not choose the emancipation but uh actually against it and that goes all the way to let's say more contemporary orary public intellectuals like Slavu Xijek like the Slovenian school I've been um studying with. So the other

01:16:20 question would be okay what about this third realm of politics and what about public intellectuals like do do does analysis play role um in that sphere as well. I mean N plus1 I guess is a >> public discourse space or um for himself was a public intellectual like he was intervening in its social discourse like what what role do you see >> here? So theorem practice on one hand and public intervention on the other. Thank you.

01:16:52 >> I don't know if anyone's ever asked answered the question is psychoanalysis an art or a science but we keep >> taking it up right. Yeah. Um Freud was certainly interested in um extending and um broadening and inclusing including um intellectual pursuits and clinical psychoanalysis. Um, I've long tried to teach some

01:17:25 aspects of the uh what was called the culture and personality school of psychoanalysts who were very influenced by Freud. Um, I I don't know. I don't think in terms of public intellectuals that's a problem in general we lack a lot of in this society. Although we're hearing that the helix center may actually bump it up a bit. So,

01:17:56 >> but I'd be interested in what you think in the US and you know in in a small way, right? But you know the the Adam Phillips and Jacqueline Roses and whatnot who are sort of important analytically trained figures uh who have an audience and all of that. It's sort of hard to find counterparts here. Jameson >> Jameson Webster maybe. Yeah. What what what do you think the difference is? Uh well I have two. So one immediate response I thought about

01:18:27 why the cultural interest in psychonalysis might be gerine now is that psychonalysis doesn't as a set of ideas or a discourse doesn't have to be reducible to uh politics or morality. Um and that could be pretty useful as a as a as a space of thinking. I mean, it's connected to politics and morality, but it's not explainable or reducible entirely to them. That's interesting. The specific question you asked, though,

01:18:59 Ben, yeah, I I mean, Adam said to me that um Adam Phillips said to me that if he was to start out now, he's not sure that it would work in the same way for him, right? Like, and and and Jacqueline Rose is they're about the same. Well, they were they're the same age. So I'm I'm trying to think, you know, Adam came out of a a culture that it was the end of the welfare state psychoanalysis. So there was a moment in Britain when it

01:19:31 had permeated the culture because it was just there that that what's very interesting about the British case is that psychonasis was part of the the growth of a a state institutional response to public health after World War II. And and Adam's own career is interesting because he caught the very end of that. He started in working hospitals and then people started saying to him, you've got a new patient, you can have 10 sessions, that's it. And he'd say, well, what if they need 55 or

01:20:02 three? And they said, no, it's got to be 10. You got to do all 10. It doesn't make sense. Doesn't work. Right. So he it moved from, you know, the NHS is still so much at the center of British culture in so many ways. It's one of the largest employers. Even people on the left and the right will say they want to save the NHS. like um psychonalysis was in the middle of that but hasn't been so for but for for a long time. Um and then the other part I think that is the British uh approach to psycho analysis is that it's it's

01:20:34 historically very connected to literature and art. And so it's it was never fully and you know you're the expert on this you've read about this but it was never fully medicalized and and that meant that it uh was always in conversation um with culture and I don't I think that that could that was ready to be reactivated by people I know in Britain are really interested in it now and you know one thing one project I think be some of it's interesting for someone to do I don't know maybe may maybe not um

01:21:05 is is uh to to revive the history of the Emargo group in Britain >> um in the mid- 20th century uh where you had you know you had Marian Milner going and and you had major psychic figures and you also had um Ernst Gomerich and Adrien Stokes and and people there was this sense that there was this sort of total um cultural conversation going on and maybe it's because Britain's also a smaller country so you can you can you can do it you can throw your arms around

01:21:36 Um but yeah, my guess and I've just had this thought while I was elaborating it so I'm not sure how firm it is is that the the cultural uh confluence that you to take Adam Phillips career as an example I mean he was trained as a by leverite uh literary teachers when he was young always literature has been as as important to him as psychoanalysis that conjunction was was there ready to be re-energized when people got interested

01:22:06 in it again. >> Yeah. I mean I would just like to emphasize the fact that Britain from a very young you know from the the earliest days of English British psychoanalysis was a it was a lay culture. I mean I mean they had of course many prominent medical psychoanalysts but I mean some of the most famous of course of British psychoanalysts are le and I think they sort of caught that early I guess and I think modern I mean the interest among young people at least and this is

01:22:37 anecdotally among people I know and among like people who read parapractis they're not doctors >> and I think the sort of >> I mean I I I think of the the Freud quote I think this was in a letter to Oscar Fisker Fisker um where he says like I'm not um I want to save analysis from the doctors and from the priests. I want to create a profession of lay cures of souls. And I think that sort of the that's the goal for a lot of people who I think are thinking about psychoanalysis like I want to be a curer

01:23:07 like I want that type of like very humanist thing and I think the English case is an example of like to an extent at least like is this a place where that was possible for >> Yes. And culturally also you you're quite right. I think it's I my sense of British psychonalysis is historically it's very much inflected by romanticism. I mean it's very much inflected by a kind of culture you know that Winnott used to like joke that um Wdsworth read him you know but but there's this sense that you know this this this is

01:23:39 collarage on the clary that you you you want to produce a group of people who can deal with the soul but they're not priests uh and uh you know they're not um uh government agents you know that that that um there's this sort of idealism that's actually a very early 19th century idealism because when you read the biographies of of lot these 20th century British psychoanalysts that's what they were all reading >> John John Forester's final and really

01:24:10 wonderful book Freud in Cambridge I think really thinks about the sort of like early early 20th century late 19th century British cases on that he's yeah >> just to get back to the question I think it's noteworthy that you know Freud used the term psychic censor in the topographic model and later of course I think you've all heard of the word repression uh these are political terms too I mean they're applied to political situations and I one thing I think I took out of today's conversation is how

01:24:41 I never I put it together from what I've heard here from all of you that you know in some ways knowing how to manage censorship or what what do you do about censorship first of all on a personal level which is what Freud was interested in but could it be applied to at a political level. I think that's really a fascinating um connection. >> Go ahead. >> Hi there. Thank you all. Um I want taking the the question as as being

01:25:11 about America in particular. I want to reflect that there was a time when psychonalysis was really big in in in America uh immediately after World War II and in a particular form. It was ego psychology uh which was very much um uh about neurosis and sort of uh suborning the the human to to to society and the psychoanalysis that exists today uh internationally is is is a is a lot more

01:25:44 integrated in terms of its uh uh the I was just at the IPA in Lisbon and and a lot of the papers are about what they call pre-yolic states. unrepresented states, the sort of psychotic parts of the personality which in the egos frame were considered deficits or they were they were sort of offstage and I think that created a a problem in in the American mental health system. Um, so there's something I think in the new psychoanalysis or or today's psychoanalysis that's actually quite

01:26:15 new. And I think it may also be meeting the moment because if you think about what's been going on since 2015 or so, all of us have more access to unrepresented states, more more paranoid, primitive aspects of personality. >> I think we absolutely right. we've become a lot more user friendly >> um since then. And perhaps one aspect of

01:26:47 our decline that was of our own making historically was um in that era of the heyday, we weren't quite as user friendly and um the there was a sense of pathizing built into I think psychoanalytic theory that I maybe um was uh in certain ways broadly stigmatizing in the end. But anyway,

01:27:17 >> yeah, >> it's funny you should talk about neurosis because my comment is actually pretty similar. I was going to try to bridge the gap between Mr. Dames and Dr. Kofka because you kind of like you're posing this dichotomy between puritanical repression and then like hedonistic liberation and I would posit that our extreme level of interconnectivity through social media creates something totally different which is like the age of FOMO. It's not about how much sex people are having or

01:27:48 aren't having. It's how much people think other people are having sex and they're like it's creating new anxieties about sex that probably didn't exist in the time when people spoke less. And then at the same time it's validating some more violent aspects of sexuality. And what comes to mind there is like incel culture. You know I don't know if any anyone's seen that show on Netflix uh adolescence but like all of this stuff is coming to the surface that's really neurotic and uh paranoia uh inducing. So, I don't

01:28:19 know. I'd love to hear your thoughts, but >> I mean, in in one sense, it seems to me that what you're describing is the Edipus complex, >> right? Like the absolute kind of overpowering fantasy of what people other people are doing behind closed doors that you only have glimpses of fills you with envy, fills you with anxiety, fills you with a wish to punish, fills you with a terror of being punished. that that those I I think one of the reasons that those feelings are so powerful is that those are like the deepest feelings we have in many ways

01:28:52 and whether you're kind of clining in and think they're there from the very beginning or Freudian who thinks I'm few years later like like like I I still do believe deeply that those are the feelings the experiences the fantasies that um that that that rule our lives and I do absolutely think I don't think so that part I don't think is new but I do absolutely think that it's it's become sort of dispersed or generalized in ways that um we still don't sort of fully understand or fully understand the uh the consequences of. >> We're all very small ones.

01:29:23 >> We were all very small ones and are terrified of feeling that small again. >> Yeah. I just wanted to just some simple observations as somebody who went through training to become a psych a clinical psycho uh clinical psychologist in the um 80s and was trained here to be psychoan analyst and am no longer practicing but the importance of historical context regarding Freud and

01:29:55 regarding psychoanalysis um psychoanalysis became was co co-op opted in the United States, you know, by a certain establishment. And so psychoanalysis is was for the last decades of the 20th century. Um, you know, equally was about power. Uh, you know, was about a certain kind of power and a certain kind of resistance to that. And

01:30:25 psychoanalytic reality in terms of its place in the training of a psychotherapist, you know, eventually increasingly constricted and increasing and and suffered its own, if not demise, you know, radical um diminishment and new things and new new new ways in the in the context of the now. and and the this last decade especially,

01:30:57 you know, where there is this threat to individual to the individual to freedom of speech and thought that is increasingly concerning, you know, our obligation as psychoanalytically informed humans. you know to in the the interface of history of current reality, political, social reality um with psychoanalysis. What is our obligation

01:31:28 very simply in terms of reaffirming such basic ideas is the analytic situation. The idea of interpretation that individuals can embark on a uh a project of understanding together with another and really be able to have some tools with which they can look at, you know, a reality that's gone mad. and a uh you know and in a way that really is

01:31:59 squaltching and dampening of creative thought and empowered thought. What is our kind of moral obligation in simple ways to reaffirm what the individual can do in his her own um enterprise, psychotherrapeutic enterprise to that will be tools that they can use forever in in their lives to help reaffirm, you know, the a pluralistic humanistic view

01:32:32 of um of reality. >> I came in late, so maybe you've already covered this. Uh but um it seems to me in speaking with people, there seems to be a conflict between group, family, and individual. uh the family relationships uh how how

01:33:04 have they changed since Freudian times? What is the relationship to the individual to family to group? Uh has group become more in the whole conflict of where the individual stands in relationship to f concept of what is family today and what is group relation? It's a big question but you can just take a small part. I think that could be several more roundts.

01:33:41 >> So, this one's from me. I guess it was inspired a bit by a comment asking about I guess you kind of went over it looking at how much the hypotheses and theories hold water. So, I guess two comments I have. One is I come from basic science and I like Freud but from my experience anecdotally most people don't really like him or if they know him they yeah I mean if they even know him right so usually it's a sexist or has he been disproven this is from a basic science neuroscience background and usually if they do know they all about CBT because

01:34:12 a lot of neuroscience is built off of Skinner who showed a lot of success and results with behaviorism. So I guess the comment is how how do you pitch to a basic science person that you should look at Freud considering that like how do you bring falsifiability into uh psychoanalysis because that's going to be like that's the only way you're going to be able to compete with CBT in in that realm at least right independent of the uh clinical or more literary realms. And the other comment I had is I notice there's a lot of left-wing coded speech when we're

01:34:44 talking about Freud turning people into curers in terms of like a more leftwing perspective, which is fine because if I had to choose between that and a right-wing psychosexual theory of consciousness, I I prefer the former than the latter for a variety of reasons. But I still think just um I don't know. I feel shouldn't we aim to make it a bit more universal than to use the language of Marx and other leftwing thinkers who weren't necessarily maybe inshed in in Freud or I like I don't know I guess I'm trying to I just think

01:35:15 like isn't I guess the comment I want to get to is there's a lot of anti-csychoanalysis going you know thought like with Thomas with antih psychiatry and so I'm thinking their whole point about removing institutions was not Not only was there abuse, but also there's this idea of like mind control and enforcing certain political viewpoints into patients. So if you're coming about psychoanalysis from a lefting perspective, how are you going to combat against those people saying, well, you're just trying to, you know, convert these people to your political ideology. So those are my two comments.

01:35:47 >> Interesting. I had a couple of thoughts. One is about verificationism. I don't know if you can bring verificationism into the center of Freudian thought and but I mean that could be a flaw but it could be that you know what's really interesting about psychoanalysis like literature and art is it uh it's about what gets missed by verificationist thought um it's it's about what's you know be exceeds it um and that might be okay or it might not interest people but it might not fit that framework the

01:36:17 point about politics is very interesting and I I wonder about it because um any mode of thinking that puts the unconscious at the center of it surely it the politics could surprise you. Um it could go in lots of different directions and yeah I'm not sure that it's it's it's it you can make an argument for psychonalysis as as as being aligned with one in particular. I mean, I think it's very interesting that people do, but it's surely it's it's

01:36:50 always got more surprises in store. >> Is it is it wrong if for instance like you know I am leftwing is it wrong from for one who is of a certain political bent to use psychonalis like a you know as a tool towards one's own political gains. I'm just saying like if but I think you kind of want to have it a little bit both ways, right? Because if you want to make people cures for people, you should want to cure people independent of whatever their views are. I guess it's

01:37:20 more about if you're going into a relationship where you're providing psycho analysis to a potential patient. You have to be cognizant of your own view. Like you have to be cognizant of your own views and the way that you're you're how you're interpreting the views of the patient, how the patient interpreting your own views. So I think it's just about like cognizance of that in in in the in that relationship which is where and because I'm again going back to Zaz they're I'm not a Zazian I disagree with them but I'm saying their viewpoint would be like hey you if you're not going to go in with that

01:37:51 cognizance you're not going to be aware of the fact that you potentially are trying to do some sort of mind control because the thinking is you're the patient's coming to you as a more sign a knowledgeable other right so you have sort of power in this dynamic and like if you're not cognizant or aware of that that could be, you know, it's like the slippery slope of >> I think these are really valid points and I guess what I would add is that a lot of our training as clinicians um goes to this right and that that the sort of fundamental principles of

01:38:23 neutrality and abstinence in the clinical situation are very very important and yes they're under attack from various places but I don't know any serious clinician who doesn't believe that it is not our place or labor refra any double negatives. Who affirmatively believes in our responsibility to let our patients develop themselves as themselves and not as some kind of image of us. And so um you know is the

01:38:54 somehow um the dynamic between patient and analyst which frees the patient's thought up and frees the patient to think for themselves. I have seen that um move patients in all kinds of different directions politically. I mean just in my own practice and I and I think that's probably true for most of us who are like you know committed clinicians. I I will also just sorry one more quickly which is we actually live in an era a really kind of amazing era of empirical validation and I actually I I completely agree that you can't capture what's most important but

01:39:25 there's been a lot of capturing of what's somewhat important. Um and what's his name? Jonathan Shedler has both really exposed the bunk science behind so much of the kind of um empirical validation of CBT. And once you get into reading that stuff, it is shocking what they've gotten away with and names empirical validation. And there's been major studies all over the world about the efficacy of psychonamic psychotherapy that is actually very very um compelling and comforting. And I just wanted to say I think the point that I was making was not like I think

01:39:56 clinicians should teach their you know or somehow you know impart their political values onto patients but the act of treating certain people or having you know whatever I think there is a sort of practice to the idea of like I'm going to you know have a certain amount of low fee patients or I'm going to work in this particular way. I'm going to have these things in mind while treating certain types of people. I think that is a political act and I think that is a left-wing political act to me and I think that's like something that I think there is an increasing interest among leftwing people about psychoanalysis

01:40:27 because it restores dignity because it does actually like care about you know you could say it cares about like you know oppressed people >> or it can our common humanity. >> Yeah. >> As a psychoanalyst I know this often says our time is up today. We'll have to take this up again tomorrow. Anyway, thank you everyone for your attention and our wonderful panel here today.

01:41:16 There we go.