Psychoanalysis, Money and the Economy
a conference convened for the London Freud Museum
by Prof. David Bennett and Dr. Ivan Ward
2nd-4th July, 2010.
Freud once warned his fellow analysts that there were two subjects that “civilized people” will always treat “with the same inconsistency, prudishness and hypocrisy” and about which psychoanalysts must insist on speaking with “the same matter-of-fact frankness”, namely: “money matters” and “sexual matters”. Yet the psychoanalytic profession has often followed Freud’s own example in decoding “money matters” as symbolic displacements of “sexual matters”. What would speaking “frankly” about money and psychoanalysis entail? This conference, and the volume of essays that will result from it, aims to explore all aspects of the nexus between psychoanalysis, money and the economy, including, but not limited to:
• psychoanalytic interpretations of economic behaviour, including the psychology of financial risk-taking and gambling, stock-market booms and busts, the ‘highs’ and ‘depressions’ of economies, financial traders and investors
• the roles of money and economic models in psychoanalytic theory and case histories
• the history of attempts to fuse psychoanalytic with economic explanations of social and cultural processes, as in the Freudo-Marxist tradition and its critiques of liberal economics’ theories of ‘Homo oeconomicus’
• the roles of money in the analyst–analysand relationship, or the psychotherapeutic encounter.
• psychoanalytic interpretations of monetary transactions and relationships in fantasy, fiction and film
• histories, theories and practices of libidinal economy, including sexual-economic revolutionary theories and movements
• how psychoanalysis as a profession and set of practices and theories is articulated wth specific economic conditions and trends, regionally, nationally and/or internationally
The conference will include a number of invited keynote speakers but there will also be opportunities for unsolicited papers to be presented. Proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of the conference theme will be welcome; they should include an explanatory title and a 600-word abstract, and should be sent simultaneously to David Bennett d.b@unimelb.edu.au and Ivan Ward ivan@freud.org.uk.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
A Vision of Students Today
This has just been posted on ScHARR's own, rather excellent, Library blog, so many thanks to the team there for their hard-work (and for letting me nick their cool link).
I'm not sure that it is a terrific ad for distance learning, but it raises some very interesting questions about the process of learning, what learning means, and how we achieve it. If nothing else it makes clear that we need to move beyond the nineteenth century conception of learning in higher education, which unfortunately still too often dominates universities (which are, fundamentally, I always like to remind people, medieval institutions re-designed in the shape of nineteenth century prisons, run today by CEOs as though they were international corporations. And we wonder why sometimes they don't work as we'd like them to...?)
And this video certainly doesn't address psychoanalysis or psychotherapy explicitly -- except to imply, perhaps, that there is a whole future generation of alienated, highly-educated, square-eyed, tech-governed clients just waiting outside our consulting rooms.
So, then, for your consideration:
I'm not sure that it is a terrific ad for distance learning, but it raises some very interesting questions about the process of learning, what learning means, and how we achieve it. If nothing else it makes clear that we need to move beyond the nineteenth century conception of learning in higher education, which unfortunately still too often dominates universities (which are, fundamentally, I always like to remind people, medieval institutions re-designed in the shape of nineteenth century prisons, run today by CEOs as though they were international corporations. And we wonder why sometimes they don't work as we'd like them to...?)
And this video certainly doesn't address psychoanalysis or psychotherapy explicitly -- except to imply, perhaps, that there is a whole future generation of alienated, highly-educated, square-eyed, tech-governed clients just waiting outside our consulting rooms.
So, then, for your consideration:
Friday, 19 June 2009
In Your Dreams?
I thought that this most recent announcement from the Freud Museum was much too delicious not to share:
As a happily married man -- and someone for whom the prospect of dating, letting alone Freudian dating, always seemed a terrifying prospect -- I, alas, will not be attending, so I would be most grateful if any Psycho-Babble On... reader who intends to brave what promises to be at the very least a most intriguing evening would offer a report on the event.
I look forward to your correspondence.
In Your Dreams! Singles nights with a twist at the Freud MuseumI think the Freud Museum has stumbled on to a winner here! Good luck to everyone. I hope the couch will be very busy.
The Freud Museum is proud to present a couple of lively evenings of mind-expanding games and flirtatious banter with London's brightest and best (that's you by the way, don't let us down!).
As the father of psychoanalysis, Freud is best known for his theory that everything we do is driven by unconscious thoughts and feelings. So let your unconscious guide you to the Museum where a night to remember will unfold.
We can't guarantee to reveal the innermost workings of the mind, but we can promise an intriguing evening where dreams will be interpreted, free associations made and doubtless repressed feelings liberated!
Plus, there'll be plenty of time to enjoy a drink in the garden, admire Freud's couch and of course your fellow guests!
As a happily married man -- and someone for whom the prospect of dating, letting alone Freudian dating, always seemed a terrifying prospect -- I, alas, will not be attending, so I would be most grateful if any Psycho-Babble On... reader who intends to brave what promises to be at the very least a most intriguing evening would offer a report on the event.
I look forward to your correspondence.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Book announcement: Jeffrey Berman, Death in the Classroom
I heard Jeffrey Berman speak at a conference a couple of years ago on this and was impressed with his intelligent and moving ideas. Here, now, is announcement for the book, published with SUNY press. You can read the first chapter here.
Jeffrey Berman, Death in the Classroom
Shows how death education can be brought from the healing professions to the literature classroom.
In Death in the Classroom, Jeffrey Berman writes about Love and Loss, the course that he designed and taught two years after his wife’s death, in which he explored with his students the literature of bereavement. Berman, building on his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing writing, shows how his students wrote about their own experiences with love and loss, how their writing affected classmates and teacher alike, and how writing about death can lead to educational and psychological breakthroughs. In an age in which eighty percent of Americans die not in their homes but in institutions, and in which, consequently, the living are separated from the dying, Death in the Classroom reveals how reading, writing, and speaking about death can play a vital role in a student’s education.
“Death in the Classroom deals with an extremely important topic—our attitudes toward death and grieving and the possibility of helping students, through reading, writing, and classroom discussion, to reflect on death and grieving in their own and others’ lives. I like the book’s clarity and the vigor of its argument for death education in the university classroom. This is a book for teachers, especially teachers of literature and life writing who are committed to teaching literature from an ethical and experiential perspective, and it will also appeal to those interested in death education and attitudes toward death and dying, particularly in North America.” — Hilary Clark, editor of Depression and Narrative: Telling the Dark
Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His previous books include Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning, also published by SUNY Press; Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure; Empathic Teaching: Education for Life; and Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom.
Jeffrey Berman, Death in the Classroom
Shows how death education can be brought from the healing professions to the literature classroom.
In Death in the Classroom, Jeffrey Berman writes about Love and Loss, the course that he designed and taught two years after his wife’s death, in which he explored with his students the literature of bereavement. Berman, building on his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing writing, shows how his students wrote about their own experiences with love and loss, how their writing affected classmates and teacher alike, and how writing about death can lead to educational and psychological breakthroughs. In an age in which eighty percent of Americans die not in their homes but in institutions, and in which, consequently, the living are separated from the dying, Death in the Classroom reveals how reading, writing, and speaking about death can play a vital role in a student’s education.
“Death in the Classroom deals with an extremely important topic—our attitudes toward death and grieving and the possibility of helping students, through reading, writing, and classroom discussion, to reflect on death and grieving in their own and others’ lives. I like the book’s clarity and the vigor of its argument for death education in the university classroom. This is a book for teachers, especially teachers of literature and life writing who are committed to teaching literature from an ethical and experiential perspective, and it will also appeal to those interested in death education and attitudes toward death and dying, particularly in North America.” — Hilary Clark, editor of Depression and Narrative: Telling the Dark
Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His previous books include Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning, also published by SUNY Press; Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure; Empathic Teaching: Education for Life; and Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom.
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