Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Towards the Limits of Freudian Thinking

The publication of Freud’s speculative masterpiece Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), stretched the limits of psychoanalytic thinking towards metaphysics and biology. The implications of these relations, and the fragmentary nature of the text itself, were explored in a landmark publication in 2024 entitled Towards the Limits of Freudian Thinking.

In this event, two of the book’s editors, Jenny Willner and Herman Westerink, will discuss their findings and explore why Freud’s most challenging and controversial text is so productive of diverse perspectives and contemporary readings. We are also delighted to welcome Raluca Soreanu and Richard Simanke as respondents.

Freud’s first edition of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips) is one of the titles up for adoption as part of phase two of our Sigmund Freud Library Conservation Appeal.

Tickets include a welcome drink. The event will be introduced by the Freud Museum’s Research Manager, Tom DeRose.

The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum. Unfortunately the Freud Museum does not have step-free access at this time.
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Speakers:

Herman Westerink is Endowed Professor and Associate Professor in Metaphysics and philosophical anthropology at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He did his PhD at the University of Groningen and wrote his professorial dissertation (Habilitation) at the University of Vienna. He has published many books and articles on Freudian psychoanalysis, sexuality, subjectivity and religion. Amongst others he published a monograph on Freud’s theories of the sense of guilt (2009), a monograph on the first edition of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (2021 – with Philippe Van Haute). Also he published a monograph on Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (2019). Recently he published a monograph on Freud’s metaphysics of trauma (2022 – with Philippe Van Haute). He is co-editor of the book series “Sigmund Freuds Werke: Wiener Interdisziplinäre Kommentare” (Vienna UP) and of the book series “Figures of the Unconscious” (Leuven UP). Het is vice-president of the advisory board of the Vienna Freud Museum.

Jenny Willner is an Assistant Professor for Comparative Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. She completed her PhD at Freie Universität Berlin with Wortgewalt. Peter Weiss und die deutsche Sprache (Konstanz UP, 2014). Her work on Freud and Ferenczi has been published in Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen (11, 2020), RISS. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse (94, 2021), Psychoanalysis and History (24, 2022) and Imágó Budapest (3, 2023). She co-authored the book Ferenczi Dialogues. On Trauma and Catastrophe with Raluca Soreanu and Jakob Staberg (Leuven UP, 2023). In 2024 she completed her professorial dissertation (Habilitation) at the LMU Munich: Unbehagen am Erbe which discusses Freud and Ferenczi’s phylogenetic and biological speculation in relation the ideologically charged natural scientific debates of their time.

Raluca Soreanu is a psychoanalytic and psychosocial thinker and writer. She is Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and psychoanalyst, member of the Círculo Psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave, 2018) and the co-author, with Jenny Willner and Jakob Staberg of Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe (Leuven University Press, 2023). She is the project lead of FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for Our Times (UKRIFrontier Research Grant) and Editor of the ‘Studies in the Psychosocial’ series at Palgrave.

Richard Theisen Simanke is Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, teaching in the MA Philosophy Programme and in the MA and PhD Psychology Programmes (2012-present). Previously he was Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Methodology of Science at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, teaching in the MA and PhD Philosophy Programmes (1994-2012). His main research fields are the History and Philosophy of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science. He has been a Research Productivity Grant Holder from Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development since 2003. He was also Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (2024-2025). His selected publications are: Biosemiotics and Evolution: The Natural Foundations of Meaning and Symbolism (with Elena Pagni, Springer, 2021), “Barbara Low and Sabina Spielrein: Misrepresentations of Their Work in the History of Psychoanalysis” (with Fátima Caropreso, American Imago, 2022) and “Meaning and Object in Freud’s Theory of Language” (International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2017).

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Tickets: £25

Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming.

A limited number of £10 bursary tickets are available for those under financial hardship. Priority will be given to UK unemployed and PIP/ESA claimants. Please email [email protected] to apply for a bursary.

The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular public income.