All registrants will receive their link to join via ZOOM. Attendees will also receive access to the recording on the Monday after the event, available to watch back for 3 months.
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Abstract:
This paper explores how a core experience of the “unhomely” (unheimlich) – a disquieting sense of alienation and threat within one’s psychic sphere – acts to drive the proliferation of conspiratorial narratives. When the secure internal space of psychic coherence, belonging, and predictable reality, which one could observe as the core psychoanalytic construct of “home,” is disrupted by societal upheaval, widespread uncertainty, or a perceived loss of control, individuals may experience this unsettling disquiet. As a result of this, they embark upon a search for new, though illusory, forms of psychic anchoring.
Drawing on Freudian and Kleinian insights, this presentation argues that conspiratorial thinking offers a distorted, though compelling, substitute for this lost psychic security. In response to the unhomely, it fosters a rigid categorisation of the world into “all-good” insiders and “all-bad” external persecutors, effectively acting to construct a simplified, though paranoid, new “home” for the ego. As such, unbearable anxieties and internal conflicts are expelled onto external, malevolent “others,” allowing for a clear target for diffuse fears. Despite this, while seemingly offering a sense of order and empowerment, this process thereupon reinforces a rigid, defensive posture that precludes genuine integration and acceptance of ambiguity.
The paper will illustrate the means in which these dynamics come to the fore in contemporary conspiratorial beliefs, highlighting their primary role in constructing a perceived coherent reality when the external world feels chaotic and uncontrollable. By examining the relationship between these elements, one can better understand the key appeal of conspiracies as an attempt to restore a notion of psychic “home” in an increasingly complex and disorienting political climate, and what this means for the potential for genuine societal integration and collective resilience in the face of future crises.
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Speaker:
Callum Blades is a researcher, writer and lecturer at Bournemouth University. His research interests include politics, political philosophy, psychosocial studies, psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary political discourse. His recent work has focused on the psychosocial dynamics of online communities and the cultural impact of digital media.
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Tickets:
Suggested donation £10-£15. Minimum donation £1.
The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible.
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The Freudian Research Seminar Series
The Freudian Research Seminar Series (FRSS) will convene virtually once every month and seeks to establish a forum which both cultivates and circulates new psychoanalytically informed research. We welcome both PhD students and Researchers across disciplines (inc. psychoanalysis, psychology, literature, art, film, history), to participate and form a community in which new ideas can be openly discussed and developed.
Each seminar will commence at 6pm (London) and last for an hour and thirty minutes, with thirty-forty minutes for the paper followed by a discussion. Seminars will be recorded for those registered to playback for 3 months but please note they will not be later made available on the On Demand service.
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Schedule:
Wednesday 22 October – Kimberly Lamm, Fashioning the Ego as Home: Black Women Writers and Clothing
Thursday 27 November – Helen Rose, No Fixed Abode, No Fixed Support? The Weaponization of Homelessness in an Era of Austerity and NHS Decline
Thursday 11 December – Kazue Niki, Staging the Finale: Freud’s London Garden as a Constructed Space
Wednesday 28 January – Faye Mather, A Return to the Mother – on the transition from Freudian fathers to Kleinian mothers in psychoanalysis and Athenian tragedy
Thursday 26 February – Arjet Pervizi, Renting Within Oneself: A psychoanalytic exploration of home – between rent and ownership, transience, and the fantasy of belonging in the psychoanalytic subject
Thursday 26 March – Callum Blades, The Unhomely Mind: Conspiracies as a Defence Against Psychic Displacement
Thursday 23 April – Nisrina Larasati, “Only You Understand Me Completely”: Contemporary Investigation of the Uncanny in AI Therapy Bots
Thursday 21 May – Sam Bolton, I Cannot Turn Away from Your Home: A Melancholic Reformulation of Transgender Dysphoria
Thursday 25 June – Anna-Peter Magyarlaki & Eric Harper, Homes, closets and wombs: Psychoanalytic reflections on home-making and homelessness for queer, trans and gender nonconforming people
Thursday 30 July – Huaiyuan “Susanna” Zhang, The Ego Is Not Master in Its Own House: Levinas, Freud, and the Ethical Unhousing of Oedipus