ON DEMAND – Psychoanalysis for the People Conference

Please note: This event has already taken place. Registration is for access to the recordings of the conference only. Once registered, it will be available to watch for 1 month and access can be found at the bottom of your confirmation email.

Originally broadcast: 16 & 17 January 2021

Day 1 – 3 hours, 12 mins

Day 2 – 3 hours, 56 mins

A conference exploring socially minded psychoanalytic practices from across the world.

In 1918 Freud placed the free clinic at the heart of psychoanalytic thought and practice, and predicted that out-patient clinics would be started where treatment would be free. His speech resonated with many psychoanalysts of his time, who were invested in the social mission of psychoanalysis and who were the authors of significant institutional innovations, setting up free and low-cost clinics in Vienna, Berlin and Budapest.

This conference starts from the premise that the more recent progressive histories of psychoanalysis remain little known among therapeutic practitioners. They are rarely written about in the professional literature or taught on trainings. Yet there is a rich tradition of psychoanalytic theory and practice which engages with the realities of social inequality based on class, gender, poverty, racism, and other forms of marginalization. We aim to explore and recognise these socially minded psychoanalytic practices, drawing on the experience of psychoanalysts working in free clinics in very different contexts, from Latin America, Africa, North America and Europe, through to the UK National Health Service. We ask what “psychoanalysis for the people” might mean in our times, more than 100 years after Freud’s famous speech.

Speakers include: Joanna Ryan, Raluca Soreanu, Paul Hoggett, Penny Crick, Baffour Ababio, Kristina Valendinova, Xavier Fourtou, Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz, Earl Pennycooke, Tereza Mendonça Estarque, Maria de Fátima Lobo Amin, Kwame Yonatan and Aida Alayarian

Keynote lecture: Patricia Gherovici (Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious [ed.])

Further information and programme

Organised by: Raluca Soreanu, Joanna Ryan & Ivan Ward

Supported by: The Waiting Times Project (Wellcome Trust, PIs Lisa Baraitser and Laura Salisbury)